Aziz has lovely décor, a clever fusion of East and West that is exotic without being chintzy. The next-door delicatessen Del’Aziz becomes a part of the restaurant in the evenings, and makes a stunning candlelit space.
Sadly, however, nothing else is up to standard. We went on a Turkish themed night, which offered a simple set menu, with only three main course options. In spite of this, main course and starter took 30 minutes to arrive. The starters, a selection of Turkish meze, had some respectable elements, fried chicken livers in particular. However, the dish mostly consisted of a large pile of extremely salty feta and a bowl of watery tzatziki. The impossibly slow service meant it was impossible to get a second serving of bread to soak these up.
Main courses were considerably worse. A half-metre lamb kebab arrived on a piping-hot skewer, which the staff did not remove, forcing diners to wrap their napkins around their hands and work at it themselves. The lamb was both tough and overcooked, while the fried potatoes accompanying it were hard to the point of inedibility. Stuffed fish wrapped in vine leaves was dry and insipid, while the stuffing was inedibly bland.
This was the first time the Turkish theme had been tried and clearly other evenings would not be quite such a disaster. Still, West London has a surplus of excellent Greek, Turkish and North African restaurants and Aziz will have to improve immeasurably if it is going to compete in such a crowded market.
Aziz has lovely décor, a clever fusion of East and West that is exotic without being chintzy. The next-door delicatessen Del’Aziz becomes a part of the restaurant in the evenings, and makes a stunning candlelit space.
Sadly, h..
more