Beautiful restaurant in great location. We went for lunch on a Friday. Staff were very helpful, service was great, Asma Khan came out to speak with us which was fantastic. All of the food was amazing. The aubergine curry was outstanding and loved the pushkars...for starters. Would highly recommend.More

Woooow..! They removed my review that I had previously written. Here it it again. The truth is a bitter pill to swallow..! Came with a friend to this restaurant and I left it with him to choose an Indian restaurant. A £50 deposit was asked...for on 9th April 23 when the booking was made the day before. I have been a chef with experience for more than 40 years, so I know a few things about food and the running of a restaurant. I've been eating Indian cuisine for as long as I've been cooking. In all it's diversity from Bangladeshi to Sri-Lankan. I like good Indian and I cook Indian with great passion, I alway's include passion in all my cooking, it makes it taste better. Now that you know a little about me, let's get on with the review. The Darjeeling Express is owned by Asma Khan a an ex-lawyer. Let's get straight to the facts she is neither a chef or a restauranture. That's all press hype. She is a likable person and the press seem to like here. To discribe the Darjeelingn, it's more of café than a restaurant, a far cry from fine dining. My friend and myself were led to a table, nice size table 22, bill #659. We are asked if we would like drink's after five minutes of being seated. We asked for sparkling mineral water and was told the did not have any and was offered soda water at £3.50 a pop a glass. More than the price of a bottle of mineral water. The waiter came to us and asked if we were ready to order, we said yes, but for now we'll order only starter's and later the mains. The starters, 1 Special Momo £12 1 Saag Pakora £9, 1 Tangra Prawns £10 and 1 Chilli Cheese Toasties £12. The mains 1 Methil Chicken £23, Paneer Korma £23 and 1 Paratha £6 (should have been 2 pieces) The Special momo was terrible, heavy dough and the filling was just diced vegetables, void of any flavour whatever. The Saag Pakora lacked seasoning. The Tangra Prawns had flavor but we're just served in a small dish with with fried chilli's, no garnish. Would have been better if it was severed a herb salad and a wedge of lime. Now the Chilli Cheese Toastie was a joke, wasn't spicy and the sliced bread was the thinest one can buy, very disappointing. The Methi Chicken thigh's lacked Methi I couldn't taste it. The chicken was floating I a lot of oil, left most of it. My friend's Paneer Korma didn't fair any better, very disappointed. The Paratha looked and tasted like it had been fried in oil and not on cooked a skillet, we only received 1 piece instead of 2 as on the menu. The owner brought over some small stuffed cold potatoe Puchkas shell's with tamarind water, not good at all. Would have been better stuffed with pickles. Overall for a meal for two that cost £114.75 with no wine or beer. I wouldn't expect to pay more that £70 for that meal. It's a very over priced. We both looked at each other in disbelief of what we had experienced. No lingering taste in our mouths, nothing. We agreed we won't be coming back. No Passion whatsoever..More

Beef tamatar gosht, slow cooked beef in a thick spicy gravy, this was so well cooked it was falling apart. My wife had prawn malaikari which looks benign but packs a punch. We shared the Bengali aloo dam, again you must like spice. Shared rice...and paratha and I do like their lassi. All told this was a beautiful meal, the view of the hustle and bustle of the kitchen adds to the occasion. You have to book in advance as it’s so popular. A little expensive but you get what you pay for. I know we will be back again.More

I'm sure like many people, I first heard about Darjeeling Express and Asma Khan from the Netflix series Chef's Table. Asma's journey and the restaurant sounded so interesting, I decided that when I found myself in London, I would go. Luckily, they begin serving early,...so I was able to go before an opera that started at 7:30. Dinner is a prix fixe thali of 65 pounds. (They do have an a la carte menu at lunch.) This is much more than I ever spend on a meal, but it was worth every cent. You got a choice of a starter and main, filled out with various sides. As an opening snack, there were home-made potato chips with chutney. Except for the pickled carrots (I just don't like them), every item was beautiful, full of flavor and superb. The wait staff was polite and helpful. And I had to fan-boy out for about a minute when Asma came over to chat with me for a bit. I would go back in a second!!! One word of advice: it is a strange place to find. You have to go in to a kind of alley-doorway to a large open three-story food court. Darjeeling Express is on the top floor, so not so easy to see!!More

We had the best time here, the food was phenomenal and the staff were lovely. Asma came over at the end of the meal and chatted, a really great and welcoming experience.

Thank you so much to all the team at Darjeeling Express for providing us with delicious food and wonderful service during our afternoon at your restaurant. This is a great place for a truly authentic Indian food experience.

A great new location for Darjeeling Express. Food and service was excellent. Love the ethos behind it. Asma took the time to come and talk to us which was lovely.

Dinner with long standing friends, shown to our table at 7.45pm. All started off so well, drinks ordered, then to the food order. I fancied the beef, advised no beef! It’s a set tasting menu why wouldn’t you have all of the produce? No matter,...I went for the goat, which was lovely as was the service, all of the staff were very attentive. After our pudding course we all fancied coffee. The machines been turned off we were informed (it’s 9.50pm, plenty of diners still at their tables) we were astonished. Why hadn’t we been asked if we intended ordering coffee before they’d turned it off? Then all of a sudden the bill turns up, which we hadn’t asked for! I expressed my astonishment again. We’d got the message. Paid the £400 bill and left. If your going to charge a premium, deliver on it. Will I return or recommend? er no!More

Went to Darjeeling Express yesterday and had a lovely time. New restaurant looks fab and is much roomier. We had a real feast. Lots of food and everything tasted amazing. We particularly loved the chickpea and chicken starters. Our waitress was lovely - very attentive...and Asma took the time to talk to us.More

I had heard such great things about the Darjeeling Express and so had decided to book dinner for my wife and I to celebrate our wedding anniversary there. We only choose to eat in a restaurant with such high prices as the Darjeeling Express on...two or three occasions a year, when it is one of our Birthdays or our anniversary, and therefore when we do go to such an establishment we expect there to be some kind of wow factor that makes it stand out above lesser restaurants. Unfortunately with the Darjeeling this was not the case from start to finish. When making the reservation, I was impressed by the fact that I was asked if the dinner was to be for a special occasion, to which I responded yes it would be for an anniversary. On the evening however, there was no recognition made throughout the evening by anybody at the restaurant that it was our anniversary and furthermore we were given a not particularly nice table in the middle of the restaurant floor within very close proximity of the tables on either side of us, and not one of the nice booth tables which would have been more befitting for such an occasion. Shortly after arriving, I needed to go to the toilet and noticed that there was only one male cubicle for the entire restaurant. This was not an issue, however I consequently noticed that the lock was not working on the door of the toilet. I decided to still use the toilet, trying to keep one arm on the door to stop anybody else from potentially coming in. As soon as I walked back into the main area of the restaurant, I informed a female member of staff about the issue, thinking that it would be in in their interests to know and to rectify at the earliest opportunity, to prevent any inconvenience for other customers and to avoid any possible complaints. It was not a major issue and probably just needed a spanner to tighten the necessary fixing. Later in the evening before leaving the restaurant, I decided more out of curiosity to go to the toilet again to see if anything had been done about it. I was shocked to see it was indeed still not functioning! I was flabbergasted to see that in a restaurant that charges such high prices, there was only one male toilet in the whole restaurant and that this one toilet had been allowed to be left without a functioning lock the entire evening! Really poor from such a supposedly high class establishment. The food was good and we enjoyed it all, however it did not have any kind of wow factor, which I was hoping for and expecting when paying about four times the price of what a thali would normally cost in other restaurants! There was nothing unique about it, nothing that made it stand out from other restaurants of the same cuisine. Even the rice and puri breads (of which you only receive two mini sized portions- you would probably have to pay another £10 pounds if you were to request another piece (!), something that is all the more ironic given that these are things you receive in abundance when you eat out in restaurants in India or Pakistan and which are often automatically replenished free of charge when the serving staff notice that you have finished the ones on the table) were very plain and ordinary- absolutely nothing that made them special or different from any other restaurant. When we finished our main courses, the restaurant was almost empty and about to close. We had however had to wait over an hour for our main thali dishes to arrive and it was therefore through no fault of our own that we were still there at that time. As soon as the staff removed our plates, they slapped our desserts down on the table and it became clear that we would need to eat up quickly and leave. Again, in such a supposedly high class restaurant I would have expected to have been given at least fifteen or twenty minutes to comfortably eat our deserts and to perhaps even order a cup of tea to have with it, even if the official closing time had already passed. It was clear we were not going to be there much longer, so why were we made to rush so much when it was not even our fault we were still there at that time?! And then, to top it all off as we were about to leave a young man came to our table, who I believe was perhaps the son of the owner and proceeded to ask how our meal was without even the courtesy of looking in our eyes as he said this. It was as if he wanted to say, thank you for spending £200 in our restaurant and for wasting your money and now goodbye! I know that this is perhaps something small for some people, however I really do not like it when a person talks to me without looking me in the eye, especially when we have just laden his pockets full with money! Sadly, all in all this was a very underwhelming experience. My wife had had such a wonderful and memorable experience attending the biryani supper club back in 2017 and had told me about it on several occasions making me very excited to attend myself and to also make the booking to surprise her on our anniversary, however this seemed like a complete let down compared to her first experience sadly. I can assure you that I am somebody that very rarely writes negative reviews about an establishment, having myself worked in hospitality for many years, however on this occasion I felt it was warranted and hope that the restaurant can perhaps learn things from my review to make experiences, especially those that are to mark special occasions, better for future diners. A tip for other potential customers however- if you are fans of this cuisine but would like somewhere that does have more of a wow factor and an experience that is reflected in the prices that are charged, then the Cinammon Club in Westminster is a much better option- and they will remember that it is your Birthday/Anniversary however busy they might be!More

The reopening of Darjeeling Express in its new Kingly Court location is a cause for celebration. A beautiful room (with a great view into its spacious kitchen), delightful and knowledgeable service, and, above all, truly outstanding, delicious food combine to offer an exceptional experience. In...the evenings, the £65 set grand thali offers excellent value for money: an array of superbly prepared and presented dishes, two chosen by each diner (in my case wonderful chicken and goat dishes) with many outstanding accompanying dishes and three equally delicious deserts. The new Darjeeling Express deserves to be an outstanding success. Don’t hesitate. Just go.More

Went on Monday night (06/02/23), what a delight!! The food was amazing, incredible flavours, excellent service. And to top it all ASMA was there and signed her book for us. Cannot wait to go back!!