Until recently, you’d have more chance of finding a genuine Rolex in Karama than you would a flavoursome meal in a shopping centre, but the likes of the Armani Caffé have prompted a shift to revitalise mall eateries into far more than culinary pit stops. Sadly, India Pavillion is yet to join the revolution. Compared to the nearby designer Italian the Pavilion seems no more a restaurant than Dr. Dre is a medical practitioner. The restaurant sits on a food forecourt sharing floor space with other outlets – Japengo to the left, Al Hallab to the right – and it’s somewhat disconcerting to see people on the table right next to you eating at an entirely different restaurant.

The wicker chairs and glass-topped wooden tables are a cut above the usual mall furniture fare but sadly the food’s hit and miss at best. The prawn malai with a gentle coconut and ginger sauce was delicately spiced but the lamb rojan josh was bland and unremarkable. The dishes, which came in separate little bowls all placed on one plate – making eating a little fiddly – also came with chips. Yes, chips, although that’s only plural on a technicality as there were merely six of them shyly hiding away in the corner.

For dessert, their gulab jamun was a spongy and delightful affair despite the overwhelmingly sweet syrup. The affogato, served in an inverted funnel shaped glass with warm espresso at the bottom and ice cream on top, a dessert and coffee in one, is a better bet for the caffeine-seeking shopper.

Service is polite and efficient and we’ll assume the fact they charged us for a more expensive dish rather than the one we actually ordered was down to human error rather than any fiscal fiddling. But there’s little else to entice us back. Mall eating has evolved far beyond dingy fried chicken joints in noisy food courts, and although the Indian Pavilion’s far better than that, it’s still someway behind the front runners.

The bill (for two)
Prawn malai curry Dhs38
Lamb rogan josh Dhs38
Plain nan Dhs4
Peshawari nan Dhs7
Gulab jamun Dhs12
Affogato Dhs14
Fruit juice Dhs15
Fruit cocktail Dhs14
Total (excluding service) Dhs142