Mowgli Indian Street Food Review

Mowgli is another new restaurant located in the Manchester Corn Exchange and it sounded very promising indeed. I have been here twice now, once with the family and once with a friend, the first time I was impressed and the second time, which was only a fortnight later, I was very disappointed.

The first visit was in late January, so not too long after they had opened the doors. Situated on three floors, there is plenty of seating but it is still advisable to book so as not to be disappointed. The interior is spacious and clean but then you would expect such cleanliness from a brand new restaurant. We were greeted by the waitress who shown us to our table, took our drinks order and then explained how the menu worked. We were given a little explanation about Indian street food and were advised that ordering two or three dishes per person was the way to go.

Mowgli Indian Street Food

After studying the menu for a good ten minutes we selected the following dishes to share:

The Bombay Chip Butty, Gunpowder Chicken, Maa’s lamb chops and turmeric chips, Mowgli Sticky Wings, House Lamb Curry, Mowgli House Keema, Goan Fish Curry, Aunty Geeta’s Prawn Curry, Tea Steeped Chickpeas, Bunny Chow. We also ordered a couple of rotis and some rice to share.

Within five minutes of ordering, we had our first couple of dishes on the table which suggests that everything is pre-cooked, no big deal but just something worth noting. All of the dishes were hot and well presented. I tried everything bar the chip butty and the bunny chow and I was very impressed with most of the dishes, my particular favourite being the sticky wings, which were very large and covered in a rich, sticky, barbecue type sauce, very tasty indeed, so much so that my mouth is watering as I type this. My only complaint, and this applies to most restaurants, why give an odd number? there were five wings on the plate to share between four people, as it happens my girlfriend doesn’t like chicken wings so that meant we only had to divide five into three, on this occasion it worked out quite well as the girlfriends mum only had one and me and the girlfriends dad had two each. On the second visit however, dividing five into two is much more difficult and when it is the best dish on the table it can cause some problems. It was the same situation with the lamb chops. Restaurants, please consider this when planning your menu 🙂 anyhow, I digress back to the rest of the food:

All of the curry’s were hot and spicy, which is how I like my curry, but even the dishes that we were told were quite mild were pretty spicy, be advised if you don’t like your food too spicy. The dishes were all quite generous and full of meat or vegetables and there was plenty to share. All the dishes were unique in flavour and all were very tasty, with the exception of the Goan fish curry that is, which was rather bland and pretty tasteless, there also wasn’t much fish in it.

The dessert menu is pretty minimal, with a choice of traditional Indian dessert gulab jamun, Mowgli chocolate cake, lassi, an Indian milkshake type drink made with yoghurt or hand made ice cream cones. We all went for the ice cream cones which although rather small were very nice.

The total bill for four people sharing ten dishes and two sides plus, an ice cream each and two drinks each came to approximately £90 which I though was quite reasonable.

Based on this visit I would certainly return again, which I did a few weeks later and how things had changed.

The place was quite empty, but then it was a Sunday night, it was also valentines day which for some reason raised a couple of eyebrows when two men entered the restaurant together. How strange. But even though the restaurant was empty we were still asked to wait to see if there was any tables available. After a lot of back and forth’s between various members of staff we were finally shown to a table upstairs, we were the only people there. Not a great first impression.

Mowgli Indian Street Food Interior

The waitress although friendly, didn’t seem too pleased to be at work, perhaps she was missing out on valentines treat with her boyfriend? but she lacked the enthusiasm of the waitress who served us on our first visit and didn’t explain the menu very well. It wasn’t really much of a problem as we had an idea what to do anyway. Its just a nice touch and shows the visitor that they are important. The rest of the staff seemed to be just standing around joking with one another.

I had been singing the praises of Mowgli to my friend and told him how tasty some of the dishes that I had tried on the first visit were, especially the wings which were the first thing we ordered. Along with these we had the house lamb curry, the house chicken curry and the gunpowder chicken, with some rice and rotis on the side.

Again, the food arrived within minutes but this time all of the dishes were cold and uninspiring. The three curries we had chosen could have all come out of the same pot as they all tasted exactly the same and were blander than bland. I cannot express how disappointed we were with the whole experience but especially the food. We were in an out within about 40 minutes.

Based on this second visit, I wouldn’t return to Mowgli again which is a shame because the place really did appeal to me and has so much potential. Perhaps its a training issue?

Note: In order to give a true score, the review below is based on an average of both visits.