The Tamara Lounge, Uxbridge

Restaurant, cocktail bar and shisha lounge located in a former pub on the busy Uxbridge Road. There is a dining room and bar as you enter, with a heated outdoor area with TV screens showing live sports to the left-hand side. This acts as the shisha lounge. Food is a mixture of Indian, Chinese & Lebanese. It was quite busy inside for a Wednesday evening, with a happy hour between 5-8pm. Belly dancers make an appearance on Tuesday and Thursday and the place becomes a nightclub at the weekend. Drinks are a mixture of keg staples, bottles and cocktails. Seemingly popular with the local Asian community, I found this place to be agreable in its own unique way and ended up having quite an enjoyable evening with my first experience of shisha!

Now converted into an Indian restaurant, they have a bar where drinkers are welcome but no real ale, although no-one was eating during my early Friday evening visit. Very bright inside and the décor has Indian flourishes as you'd imagine and includes an obligatory fish tank. As I was writing a note that a lack of muzak was a good touch and was encouraging plenty of conversation, they turned it on to a 'shouting-to-make-yourself-heard' level. Don't bother with this one.

Currently closed for refurbishment