This is a restaurant review that I wrote with the KT Features Editor - Sushmita Bose. I wrote the scene setter and she wrote the review of the Indian food. Read my bit below and then see how it appeared in print!

A word to the wise, our maître d’  tells us; we’re crowded out on Thursday evenings and Friday lunchtimes… which is as well to know, as right now we are the only clientele gracing one of Dubai’s newest Indian restaurants.

Namaste – A Taste of India is hardly three months old and is hidden away inside an equally new hotel – the Excelsior Creek, not a stone’s throw from Bur Juman and Khalid bin Al Waleed metro station. Unless you have been told of its existence, or are a guest at the hotel, you are unlikely to know of it, since no one has thought fit to advertise its presence outside the hotel.

And that’s a pity, because in almost every other respect the owners have gone to great lengths to ensure their customers have an excellent meal at rock bottom prices, served by attentive waiters to the sound of a pretty good Ghazal band that is happy to take requests from the diners as they eat. The maître d’ has been flown in from London; the Ghazal band from Mumbai; and the food is unashamedly aimed at the local expatriates from the sub-continent.

We sit in red and gold chairs at red, gold and black covered tables with red and black walls and red and gold drapes complimenting the ensemble nicely.

My companion and I simultaneously plump for a Mint Mohito from the drinks menu – a good choice as it turns out - before attending to the task in hand and deciding what we are going to munch. The answer, as it turns out, is pretty well everything.

{Sushmita – this is your area of expertise!}

And so as our stomachs attempt (unsuccessfully) to convince us we have had enough to eat, we round the meal off with a hearty blob of ice cream - which goes down an absolute treat - before staggering out into the night to walk off some of the excess on the way to the metro.

What we liked: excellent food; excellent prices; excellent Ghazal band; excellent service
What we didn’t like: our stomachs simply weren’t big enough to cope with everything on offer