Chakra

I enjoyed my experience at Chakra very much– ambiance, service and food were all pretty great.
Interior is beautiful and inviting, love the dim lighting with the beautiful chandeliers. Elegant tableware and atmosphere.
Service was also great– very friendly, timely and I especially enjoyed the amuse bouche.
We thought the butter chicken was exceptional– perfectly seasoned & wonderful texture but the prawn dish left us a little waning. It started to separate quickly, the flavors were actually quite too similar to the butter chicken except more bland, and the shrimps were of ok quality.
Our uncle who lives down the street from Chakra mentioned that this is his go-​to takeaway Indian restaurant. I see why!

I really want to give one star because of how bad our experience at Chakra was tonight, but that wouldn’t be fair since some of the food was decent.
Anyway! After reading other reviews, I was really excited to go here with my girlfriend on our five year anniversary for the tasting menu. When we walked in, we got a weird vibe and maybe some dirty looks but forged ahead anyway because of the reviews we’d read. After we said we didn’t have a reservation, we were told to sit and wait at the front for a few minutes even though the restaurant was only half full. We were then seated and given menus, but no water or anything. Then a good 10 – 15 minute wait. The first of many throughout the night.
As the restaurant kept clearing out, the service seemed to get slower and slower. Eventually the servers outnumbered the tables, but all they seemed to do was walk back and forth from the kitchen to the front of the restaurant, trying to look busy or something – definitely not filling out water glasses, clearing our plates, asking how things are, anything like that. Everyone was nice but oblivious. No apologies about the wait or anything like that.
None of the food was better than your average Indian restaurant, and some of it – like the insanely overspiced, choking-​inducingly dry chickpeas – was quite a bit worse.
The meal ended up taking over two hours.
Finally the bill came and I saw that after all that crap service, they’d taken it upon themselves to add a 12.5% tip at their discretion. Classy. If you can’t earn it, just take it, right?
We won’t be going back.

One of the best Indian places in London.
Great for groups and great service.
A must go to every time I’m in London.

Just had a dinner here last night and it was fantastic — food is definitely good, above average, and it is not as greasy as many Indian restaurants tend to be. I found the dishes slightly salty but not to the level that bothered me (and I am very sensitive to salty food…)
Ambience is quite modern and not decorated like the typical Indian restaurant and it is very pleasant.
What differentiates this place all other places is service — people are just so nice and attentive, it has lovely warmth in everything they do. I eat out a lot and it is definitely the very first Indian restaurant in London I felt this warmth — and this is just do wonderful.,
I tried £30 course meal and it was a great experience — it was just a lot of food so be ready to be stuffed… And all the food felt very healthy with lots of veggies and some fish and plenty meat — very comprehensive and satisfactory meal altogether. Dishes are not too sophisticated but very well cooked with right level of spice and low level of oil.
It is a gem in this tourist packed, snobbish neighbourhood. Go for service and you will not regret it! I would definitely consider as one of the restaurant option in this very competitive neighbourhood just because of people. I left the place feeling so peaceful and warm… What a lovely experience it was!

Stylish leather clad rooms, tentative service, felt as if those on table service were on their first night. Food Southern Indian style, delicate, good use of spices. Decent wine list and they knew the wines that they sold, the wine guy was impressive. Expensive, but so was the leather furnishings I fancy, got to pay for it somehow. Overall OK experience, staff bright and breezy, I enjoyed it all.

Usually, I don’t find myself radically disagreeing with other reviewers like this, but this place is spectacular.
I went here a few days ago on the advice of a acquaintance and it was INCREDIBLE. Chakra is a Zagat reviewed, *Michelin rated* restaurant that specializes in Indian cuisine. Let me make one thing really clear — if you are visiting Chakra looking for a curry and a beer, this is not your place. You will view it as wildly expensive and not something that delivers the curry fix that we all crave from time to time. I have traveled to India frequently, visiting on probably 10 trips spanning 4 – 5 cities in north and south India over my travel career, so I do feel very comfortable with what true Indian food is – what Chakra delivered to me was comparable to what I’ve experienced in the finest restaurants in India.
If you are looking for an inventive expansion on Indian cuisine, bold flavors, and excellent service, this is probably the place for you.
I was there with a colleague from work and we ordered the set 6 course tasting menu, which at 30 GBP each was definitely beyond the standard Chicken Tikka range that you see at most restaurants. However, what ensued was the most delicious sampling of cuisine that I’ve had in quite some time. I won’t chronicle the whole menu as I’d probably sound like a wannabe food critic for the Telegraph (except without the literary skills)… however suffice it to say, that each item had something a little extra or special associated with it. The fish curries were smooth and balanced, but with a hint of some extra heat that came from uncommon spices. The starters were all well executed, with the chaat being a big highlight — the seasoning was just delightful.
Overall, a great experience and a great restaurant. If you’re ever wanting to eat truly special Indian food, take the time to go here. You won’t be disappointed.

Chakra is just far too fancy for the area, with small portions (especially for Indian) in England. I’m all about refined food, but I wasn’t such a big fan of the pompous nature of the ‘delicate’ food and the overly plush and terribly uncomfortable white leather sofas, chandeliers and animal hides suffocating the place. Maybe a better location for this place would be Mayfair or Dubai, but not a nook in Holland Park. I trust the former Goldman guys to come up with a great concept, and maybe this is paying off for them, but it just isn’t for me.

stumbled across this fab indian restaurant in notting hill and must say its a GEM!!! food was yummy!!! ordered a chicken masala, naan bread, samosas and my tummy was very happy indeed!!! a great place to go for a curry!

There is such a thing as too much service, I thought, as the fourth waiter arrived at our table seconds after the last to explain the baffling menu at Chakra recently. My mum and I went to sample this new curry restaurant soon after it opened. It takes the place of Cultural Revolution, which in my view offered excellent value tasty food but precious little atmosphere. With Chakra, the reverse is true; it’s all style over samosasand expensive to boot. But when you’ve forked out a fortune on plush interior décor as the owners clearly have here, you’re not going to charge £1 for a Frisbee-​sized poppadum and a generous carousel of sauces. No. You’re going to charge closer to £5 for quarter a broken up poppadum and serve it in a tiny little dish with a few scraps of chopped up tomato and onion and a thimbleful of sauce. As most London curry houses in London are much of a muchness, in my experience, with tired décor and predictable menus, it’s easy to impress and even fool diners into thinking they are getting a superlative experience with a fine dining approach. When this is done well it can be a sublime experience, such as that to be had at my favourite curry place: Amaya. But in Chakra’s case, upholstered white walls, clever uplighting and an army of waiting staff can’t compensate for very mediocre food, which is what we had. It was certainly highly-​coloured when it all arrived in barge-​style dishes. However, the contents had also been liquidized to oblivion in a thick sauce, so it was hard to identify what was what, save the odd bit of chicken or prawn which sometimes broke the surface. As for flavour, well, it just tasted generally curryish, but with no delicate distinction of flavours. Chakra also favours that annoying policy of keeping your wine as far away from your table as possible. Then someone will sprint over to refill your glass if you so much as look at it, meaning you end up guzzling far more than you would normally. Here the cheapest bottle of plonk is £28, so be warned. Despite what I’ve said Chakra will flourish due largely to its location and the fact the only good curry house nearby Malabar is tucked away out of sight. Ironically, despite the over-​zealous army of waiting staff during our meal, no one was on hand to fetch our coats after our meal so we waited around like lemons for 5 minutesno way to curry favour with new customers.