Food review: Open House restaurant, Westlands

Hey guys, hope you had a great weekend, I sure did. I spent my Sunday evening celebrating the birthday of a good friend of mine with some friends at an Indian restaurant. The restaurant was called "Open House Resaturant" and is located in Westlands, opp The Oil Libya petrol station, right next to the uchumi shopping centre. It was my first time there and I didn't know what to expect apart from extremely spicy dishes which is the norm in Indian restaurants. To be honest, I was abit skeptical since I'm not a fan of overly spiced food or chilli in that case. I was ready to play it safe. :-o

We ordered one starter and a couple or different main dishes.
The starters were all dry meals and the main meals consisted of fish, vegetarian, chicken, mutton and beef stews.
Once we sat down, the waiter took our drinks order and placed two salsa dishes in the middle of the table. The salsa dips were in 3 flavors; mint, chili and garlic. Being a fan of anything garlic, I wasn't as impressed by the garlic dip which I found too light in texture.

                 

     

For a starter, we ordered the chicken tikka served over a flame with a shredded cabbage and carrot salad with a nan at an extra cost of 100 Ksh. The starters all ranged between 700-850 Ksh which I found to be too pricey seeing the main dishes costed the same. I'll be honest, for 750ksh I expected a larger portion of chicken :-( All in all the chicken was very tasty and spiced just right. It was boneless and in chunks. I had a problem though with them serving the salad on the dish over a burner and I think it should have been served separately.

           

The nan was served in a small basket. It was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, perfect
for all those chapati or nan lovers. The portion was big and fit for that price and it can be shared in between two people.

For the main dish, we ordered the ginger chicken masala, Goan fish curry and the chicken tikka masala. I must say I rather enjoyed them all and my friends were quite content with the taste and generous portions of each dish. The ginger chicken was very gingery for lack of a better word. The fish curry and the  the chicken tikka masala were both very good and not overly spicy. Seeing I am not a chili lover I was glad that all the meals were perfectly mild as we had asked them, though they can make it as per preference.

The only things I wasn't as pleased about were as follows:
- we weren't offered any water to wash our hands nor any hot towels
- the prices indicated on the menu didn't include 16% VAT or the 2 % service charge which were added on the bill.
-they closed relatively early at 10pm just when we were looking to enjoy some extra time after our meal.
-half our meals were served much earlier than the others, approx 20 min which was strange since the two had ordered their meal before everyone else
-no name tags on the waiters

All in all it was a really good meal and we also enjoyed our drinks. We had strawberry and tangerine juice which were a favorite to everyone on the table. The mango lassi was also very good and it tasted like a blend of mangoes and maziwa mala.

Ambience: 4/5
Food: 4/5
Service:3/5

Bonus was that they served us the cupcakes while singing in a group.
If you happen to be in the mood for some spicy Indian cuisine, I recommend this place any day.