Caraway

A fine choice for a casual-​to-​special indian meal — as long as you aren’t in a rush! The service is so lax here the waiters may as well be napping in between taking and returning with your order. I can understand there may be an element of slow-​cooking the food in the tandoor or maybe they just took a few other group orders at the same time as ours, but even my cocktail took about half an hour to appear.
That said, you could do a lot worse than the food here when it comes to going out for Indian in London. They do a good job of avoiding serving food swimming in oil like a lot of places sadly do, and even had a couple of dishes to surprise me. My favourite by a mile was an inspired choice ordered by my mate’s mum of Warm Shakarkandi Salad. Not only because ‘shakarkandi’ is among my favourite punjabi words anyway, but it’s also perhaps my fave vegetable, sweet potato! It was served in tandoor-​roasted crispy cubes with bright pomegranate seeds — a new combination for me and really delicious.
The main dishes I found a bit samey; it was hard to tell which chicken dish was which among what we’d ordered though the ingredients had sounded quite different. There was a nice amount of spice in all of them though the ladyfingers dish had far too much salt in it. Naans were lovely and fluffy, if a little slow to arrive as mentioned.
There were several other groups there, though I do wonder how long the food for the party of 12 took if our 6 took long enough! Plenty of stereotypical décor, gold statues and lacquered wood, to take in while you wait for your food though. Take a group of friends or family if you’re in the area… and some patience.

Although the food was good a number of unpleasant behaviours by the staff spoilt the ambience for that meal and also made me swear never to go back there again. When me and my friend popped in at 6pm they seated us to a small cramped table for 2 people. I asked if they could possibly give us a bigger space, the whole restaurant was empty but they declined saying they were busy. They kept disturbing us to order although we specifically asked for more time. After food they told us to go because they needed the table which I considered extremely rude especially since I was ordering coffee. We ordered 2 but only one came after considerable time, and spilled on the saucer and coffee beans on cup. I asked to clean the cup up. That was slow in coming that i decided to cancel and asked for bill. Another Waiter said I couldn’t cancel and after some minutes brought us two new coffee’s. The bill brought in was someone else’s and had to be exchanged. All the time I felt uneasy as i sat through coffee thinking I should leave as they were wanting us to go. The food didn’t come cheap so I’m not happy they treated us as they did. Not going in there again!

This is a beautiful restaurant with a friendly atmosphere. We were a large group (around 30), and the service was excellent.
The food was extremely tasty and the cocktails were delicious! I would definitely go here again and have recommended it to my friends.

Caraway is by far the best Indian Restaurant this side of London. For me this restaurant matches Tayyabs in Whitechapel for the curry dishes they serve up, but maybe not for the grilled starters. The food is simply delicious.
This restaurant gets very busy on Friday/​Saturday evenings, so avoid these times, unless you don’t mind waiting 20 minutes for some seats cramped next to some other diners. The ambience is rather noisy at these times also. The service is also poor during this period.
All in all, a fantastic curry house. Beats the living daylights out of anything else around East London.

You know that feeling when you’re totally full but you keep eating because the food is so yummy you can’t stop? That’s what happened to me at Caraway.
While visiting the UK, I had one wish: to consume as much Indian food as possible. I may have been careless in my wishing, because it’s literally all I ate the whole week I was there. Most of it blends together in my mind, but Caraway absolutely stands out.
The full bar was definitely a plus. I had a drink called the «Woo Woo» which was very tasty, and how could you not order a drink with a name like that? ALL of the food was fantastic. Some standouts were the dal, and this yummy sweet and sour paneer appetizer that almost made me weep with joy.
I would probably go back to Ilford just to eat at Caraway. Yum yum!

I went here for dinner for a friends birthday. Its a very nice calm family orientated atmosphere. Very nice tables and the food is great. The service by the waiters was good but did have to ask the waiters a few times for things as they would forget which wasnt very professional. However they were a bit slow to serve food. Overall I had a good time and I would go back again as I did like the food and it is reasonaly priced.