Scene Dining - An Anti Climax

The Mrs and I managed to get a booking for the soft launch of Spinningfields' newest eatery, Scene Dining - indian street kitchen, last Monday. After seeing a sneak peak of the restaurant in the M.E.N with owner Asif Ali's bold boast “We’re going to bring very authentic street food, but with class and elegance and in an upmarket setting and presentation.” I had high hopes.

Sadly, these hopes were dashed!



The location is superb and the decor has had a lot of thought put into it, 70s bollywood film posters and other memorabilia from the Sub Continent adorn the walls contrasting with a very modernist feel throughout the rest of the premises.

It's a shame that the same level of thought hasn't been put into the menu. Whilst the food is presented very well it's a case of style over substance I'm afraid. The food can best be described as bland & unspectacular. Aside from a section of the menu dedicated to street food items the rest of the offerings are the standard fare that you'd expect from any other desi restaurant certainly not street enough to warrant the "street kitchen" title.

On a positive note the chutneys that accompanied the Poppadoms were actually quite nice!

The chutney accompaniments to the Poppadoms were actually a positive! They delivered a good balance of hot, sour, sweet and cooling flavours and we held onto this platter as we used it extensively to liven up the food that followed.

For starters we had Fish Amritsari, Dahi Ballay, and Kashmiri Kebab, the latter was Aloo (Potato) Kebab wrapped around a Mince centre. Whilst it sounded nice unfortunately it was too salty and the Mrs was convinced that the Aloo Kebab mixture was actually Smash although I thought that was a bit harsh.

The Fish Amritsari was decent enough but nothing special or different to any fish starter that I've had elsewhere.

The Dahi Ballay were interesting.

As you can see the presentation style was very clever with the dish served in a Poppadom bowl to provide that extra texture that you get in a Paapdi Chaat. However a Poppadom only stays crispy if it stays dry, so the solution at Scene was to serve the Dahi Ballay without any Dahi (yoghurt)! Just as well we held on to our accompaniments from the Poppadoms earlier.


I personally think that this is one item that could have been amazing as it had all the elements to make a great dish, sweet tamarind, fresh green chilli, and sev. However the execution let it down. In trying to be clever with the presentation they had to compromise on the yoghurt, it should have at least been served on the side to allow the diners to spoon it on themselves. Instead the end result was a dry dish and actually one portion of the Ballay wasn't cooked all the way through, something I pointed out to the waitress.

Moving onto mains, we had Kachay Gosht Ki Hyderabadi Biryani and a Mixed Grill.

Mixed Grill - Mixed Results

The Mixed Grill contained Lamb Chops, Chicken Tikka (boneless and leg piece), Seekh Kebab and King Prawn.

Except that there was no King Prawn because they'd run out, which I would've been fine about had I been told when the food arrived. I had to flag it to the waiter who did apologise and offered to give me an extra lamb chop.

The Seekh Kebab was bland, the chicken tikka was dry, especially the boneless pieces. The only saving grace was the Lamb Chop which was silky soft and the only item to pack a decent amount of flavour. In hindsight, we would've just ordered lamb chops on their own.

As for the Biryani, this was served in a pot, similar to how Zouk serve Biryani but it came accompanied by a humongous bowl of curry sauce! An authentic Biryani is a meal in itself, at most you'd serve it with a minty raita and a plain salad. Serving it with Curry sauce was perhaps a nod to the local takeaways who serve it this way.

The Biryani had all the right aromas were present however after a few spoonfuls it was evident that the flavour punch I was expecting wasn't going to arrive. I don't expect food to be fiery hot and am fully capable of appreciating delicate and subtly spiced food however this Biryani didn't fall into either of those camps, it was just plain and boring.

When it came to the bill, we had a 50% discount as part of their soft launch so our food bill came to £23, had it been full price then I would have had felt well and truly ripped off for having to fork out £46 for the meal we just ate.

I walked in expecting a lot from Scene, the staff were professional and polite, the decor was amazing and the hype surrounding it had propelled my expectations to dizzy heights. And it's for those reasons that I was really disappointed with the outcome. There are some great places to eat in Spinningfields including Thai Khun, which is a fantastic Thai Street Food restaurant and I expected Scene to be in the same league as that offering Spinningfields diners a great choice between South and South East Asian cuisines.

Sadly there is nothing that makes Scene stand out from the crowd and if you're in this part of town and craving something from the Sub-Continent then I'd recommend heading to Akbars on Liverpool Road or East'z'East on Blackfriars Street as either will be a good choice over Scene.