Disaster strikes the minute I walk into Aziz. I had a hilarious story all ready to tell you, about what they've done every single other time I've visited: ask if I had a reservation, sigh deeply, examine the reservations book, then stride up and down the cavernous room, footsteps echoing on the plush maroon carpets, furiously seeking an available table among the mass of available tables. Eventually, I've been summoned to a table where they can "just squeeze me in" among the mass of other, invisible, customers.
But it didn't happen this time. The waitress greeting us at the door didn't smile - that would be asking too much - but she asked if she could take our coats, led us straight to a table, handed us a menu each, and offered poppadoms. It's not bad service, is it?
Poppadoms and pickles duly arrive, along with drinks. Pickles are fine: nothing to write home about, but not the (now infamous) fermented mango chutney that I was once served at another Oxford institution, which will remain nameless.
The upwards curve continued with starters. My partner's Tandoori Galda Chingri were beasts of their genre, three giant butterflied prawns smoky from the heat of the oven and perfectly cooked, still juicy but with a wonderful meaty bite. The heap of generic frisee salad, undressed and taking up half the plate, was a little puzzling but didn't detract excessively from the prawns. My Dal Bora was less the menu description of "lentil cake" and more a mass of teeny lentil fritters, crispy outside and fluffy within, somewhat reminiscent (for those who've tried them) of the polenta chips at Jamie's Italian. They were lightly, but not overpoweringly spiced. An incredibly sweet dipping sauce was, like the salad, puzzling, but easily ignored in favour of the yoghurt dip that had come with the poppadoms, which provided a much better foil to the deep fried morsels.
Unfortunately, that was the end of Aziz's success. We were faintly disappointed with both main courses. If my Ada Gosht, described on the menu as "tikka lamb", had ever seen the inside of a tandoor, it was a very long time ago. The meat was so well cooked it could be pushed apart with a fork, and the onions and green peppers accompanying it were extremely overcooked. If you've ever tried to cook a green pepper, you'll know quite how difficult it is to overcook them, robust creatures that they are, but Aziz seem to have succeeded. The sauce had a nice amount of shredded ginger in it, but the spicing otherwise was undistinguished and undistinguishable.
My partner, as ever, chose the Chicken Pathia, which is normally the one dish we come to Aziz for, theirs being (according to him) one of the best. This time, it certainly wasn't: the chicken was dry and overcooked, and the sauce was lacking its usual citrus bite. A side of pilau rice had been mis-remembered and arrived as plain rice; a Misti naan bread was not stuffed with almonds but had a paste smeared on the outside, making it messy to eat. A complementary vegetable side dish was interestingly spiced with onion seeds and cumin, but was cold almost as soon as it was on the table.
Service throughout had been aloof, but reached a peak when the dishes were removed from the table whilst my partner still had a piece of bread in his hand, and when the tablecloth was removed whilst he was still eating it. The restaurant was not busy; there was not a queue of waiting customers; we had not been told that we only had the table for a limited period of time. So why this brusque rudeness? The implication is that the customer is simply not wanted, not welcome, despite the fact that we are paying for the food.
Bad service is not the be-all and end-all of a restaurant; I've never felt particularly warmly welcomed at the Magdalen Arms, for example. But if you are to be arrogant, you need something to be arrogant about. The food at the Magdalen Arms is excellent. The food at Aziz is occasionally good, but more often is cliched and tired, and that just doesn't make up for the poor service.
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