Time Out reviewer takes a trip to Acton

A relative newcomer to Acton High Street (Lazeez opened in December) has attracted attention from Time Out this week.

The reviewer had misgivings at first - saying the decor in Lazeez was remiscent of a show flat: "Its scrubbed and sanded dining room exudes the feel of a show-flat, overly bright and with the occasional glitch yet to be ironed out (rugs that catch on bathroom doors, dodgy soap dispensers). A handful of faux-marble tables range across the dining room, largely undecorated save for a flat-screen television and with a gleaming silver grill-cum-open kitchen stretching along one side."

However, the warmth of the welcome the reviewer received and the thoughtful service brought praise:

"Lazeez somehow managed to exude the warmth of a Middle Eastern family home during Eid. The brothers who run the place make an entertaining pair – one hawk-eyed and bubbling with amusing banter, the other soft and thoughtful – but both were effortlessly accommodating, rushing out to buy a corkscrew when we turned up with a bottle of wine (customers thus far, many fresh from the local mosque, had tended to sip nothing stronger than fruit juices)."

The reviewer approved the lack of a microwave oven: "Everything we ordered was freshly prepared. Chunks of spicy soujouk sausages were sautéed in lemon, their powerful kick a pleasing contrast to the molten slices of grilled tomato with which they were served; houmous Beiruty was hand-whipped with freshly chopped parsley and fiery green peppers; and kibbeh shameyieh (lamb and cracked wheat meatballs), deep-fried while we waited, revealed a steaming centre of minced lamb, onions and pine-nuts.

"But it was a shared main of shish taouk that delivered the sucker-punch: tender, citrus-marinated chunks of chicken served on the juice-soaked sheets of bread with which they’d been dragged from the skewer. It made the unreliable offerings of the Edgware Road seem a million miles away – which they almost were."

The reviewer's meal for two cost around £30.

February 27, 2009