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It should come as no surprise to all of you that when we had the opportunity to eat out in Brick Lane we chose a curry house - after all, that’s the reason why the road is famous. If you haven’t been to Brick Lane before then there are two things you should know:

1. there must be over 50 restaurants to choose from, and

2. you will get harassed by salesman outside each restaurant, just like when you’re on holiday in Greece or Turkey.

The choice is always dazzling and when I tried to do a little research before hand I couldn’t find a good recommendation. In fact strangely the Time Out cheap eats guide recommends a pizza / pasta place! In the end we followed the advice of a friend, who being a chef we figured would know his stuff. To save his reputation I won’t mention his name here.

The restaurant was called the Eastern Eye and I was surprised to see my friends heading in the door considering it was the only one on the Lane that was empty - the rest were buzzing. This set alarm bells ringing in my mind, but tempted by the “we’ll give you 20% off the total bill” offer, we went in. The next reason for alarm was when we were seated in a corner table next to the bar, rather than in the main restaurant. Still, that’s nothing to be too worried about I thought, they’ll surely make the table up… afraid not, we had to ask for cutlery even after our starters had arrived.

Probably the biggest problem I had with this place was the service. The waiter was surly and disinterested, not taking the time to help our vegetarian friend with her choice, or to repeat our order. To be honest, we weren’t entirely sure what was going to arrive. In the end I ordered what turned out to be quite a good chicken Biryiani, and the prawn and vegetable Korai’s were also pretty good. On the other hand the lamb Balti was far too sweet and to quote Ed “it was intense in flavour, but in a bad way” and “it’s almost as if the chef’s hand slipped and he ended up pouring in too much of one particular ingredient”.

The icing on the cake came, not with our dessert unfortunately, but when the bill arrived. Basically we were sitting at the table waiting to order dessert and coffees when two fairly p*ssed up blokes stood behind our table apparently queuing up for a table. This was quickly followed by the bill i.e. please leave. Thanks waiter. Needless to say we didn’t leave a tip.

The food on the whole was OK, but the service was terrible and at times the noise was so loud we could hardly hear our own conversation. Maybe that’s what we’ve come to expect from a curry house, but I’ve been to other far more impressive restaurants on Brick Lane. You can see my fellow diners hot footing away below, in search of somewhere else for a coffee and cake.

Eastern Eye, sorry but overall it’s a generous 4/10. Your only saving grace was the price, with 20% discount taking dinner for 4, minus desert, coffee and alcoholic drinks, down to under £50.

Overall rating 4/10