Mooli

57-59 Calverley Road, Royal Tunbridge Wells
Kent TN1 2UY 01892 545499

Chosen as the venue to celebrate my birthday this year, we took an early sitting at the newly opened Mooli restaurant on Calverley Road.
My wife and I had differing opinions of this place, so I'll start with my thoughts and let my wife finish, as she normally does.
Greeted with a friendly smile from the waiter we took our seats, my wife took her chair and I took my sofa, well it was MY birthday. We were then presented with a complimentary bowl of poppadoms which were way too spicy and inedible, and chutneys that were too posh for their own good and just didn't work, especially seeing as though they were in bowls the size of thimbles which meant that you had to smash the poppadoms into a million pieces. Not a good start.
Taking an awful long agonising look over the menu we decided on the dumplings and the vegetable samosas, which were both very good. For main my wife chose the belly of pork soaked overnight in cumin seeds, coriander, turmeric and chillies marinade and I had the Mayalu lamb which was in a mild sauce blended with cream and honey. This is where our opinions began to differ.
Me: My dish was overly sweet and sickly but the special fried rice I had ordered to accompany it was very good, although my wife found my dish very tasty indeed when her fork came wandering over. Even dipping the naan, which in itself wasn't the best, didn't dampen the sweetness. To be honest all I could think of throughout the entire main course was the Himalayan Ghurkha on Church Road, which is just so much better.
Wife: Show me a place which does better pork belly than Mooli and I will show you, well, it doesn't really matter what I'll show you because you're a liar. So there. If we ARE heading for this recession that the experts keep banging on about, then I know that I will have to kiss goodbye to all those lovely meals out, and the hubby and me will have to huddle round a big pan of lentils instead. If I allowed myself one last restaurant meal, and one alone, I'm heading straight for Mooli. I will have this and then I will have the Holy Sweet, which is carrots cooked in milk for desert. Yes. You read that right. Carrots. Milk. Desert. All in the same sentence!
One of those places that must be tried, pay them a visit and let us know how you get on. For these differing reasons we have averaged our scores to come to the conclusion below.

Experience
Service
Value
Food
Overall

Comments

[M]

Thanks for your insightful reviews of places in and around the area. We love Mooli over at Spy!!!

[Gaz]

We went to Mooli on Saturday evening after watching the "Rat Pack Live from Las Vegas" at the theatre (which was excellent) and had a wonderful meal. The service was good, and I took Mrs Anke's advice and went for the carrot dessert. Fantastic! It tasted just like a sticky toffee pud. We were always fans of their sister restaurant, the Gurkha Kitchen in Oxted, and this is up to the same standard. We're definitely planning to go back.

[jj]

We went to Mooli for our Anniversary and we loved it!! Momo the starter, pork dumplings were just ummmmmm...and then we had slow cooked lamb, pan seared tiger Prawns...yummy. I would go back again in a hearbeat.

[Rob N]

We went to Mooli on Sunday and had their lunchtime special "any 2 courses from the menu for £9.25".

It was superb. The fiddly poppadom/dip scenario was a bit odd, granted, but the rest of the meal was excellent. And the accompanying dishes! Between 4 of us, as well as our starter and main orders, we had, included in the price, 4 vegetable dishes (pumpkin, bindhi, aloo/courgette and cabbage/beans) plus 2 large bowls of rice and a naan. The naan was as good as the Himalayan Gurkha used to do, IMO, and the cabbage/green bean combo was the best veg dish I've ever had in a "sub-continentl" restaurant.

All that plus a few beers for £50 for 4.

We'll be back there very soon.

[Bill and Sue]

Our favourite restaurant in Tunbridge Wells. Lovely food - good value - friendly service. Couldn't ask for more. Try it!

[Emma Jones]

One of my top two restaurants. Best value Sunday night deal, so go then! Really tasty food- recommend the Gurkhali chicken!