Recent Curries

Raj Mahal, Penton Street

Place: A bit "modern". ie. a big glass window, wooden floors and no carpet on the walls.

Atmos: Deserted. I was the only customer, except for a chav girl who came in for takeaway and who was almost comically unaware of just how rude she was being.

Prawn puri - bland orange prawn thing, insufficiently crispy puri

Lamb dhansak - bland orange dhansak, insufficient heat or meat

Plain rice - hard to go wrong

Chana masala - bland orange etc

Overall, a poor showing.

Parsee, Highgate Hill, Highgate

I had wanted to come here for ages. It seems to be fairly well regarded, and apparently (now?) owned by Cyrus Todiwala, who has a number of other fairly well regarded Indian restaurants in London.

I had a fried chicken liver thing to start (masala ma murghi hi kalaeji). The livers were pretty good, but came with a roti which was in fact a chapathi which had been in the fridge long enough to dry out. Madam Scoffer had the wholewheat pooris (poori nay papeto) which rather than the puffed-out crispy things which seem increasingly available in flash Indian restaurants were more like dried-out mini chapathis, and which had clearly also just come out of the fridge.

For mains, I had their dhaansaak, which was a lamb in an OK but not spicy red lentil gravy (not a thick thing like curry house dhansak) with rice and, for some reason, a tiny lamb meatball. It went down OK but the whole thing felt just a bit pointless. Mrs. S once more went for the mildest coconut-creamiest prawniest curry (leeli curry ma soandh). It was "OK" but it smelled a bit fishy to me.

The extra chapathis I ordered were just the same as the one which came with my starter. We were there early (a bit before 6.30pm) but there is no excuse for dried-out pre-made chapathis.

The place: Modern, but actually a bit shabby. It would probably be soulless even if it was full.

It might not have been such a disappointment had I not been wanting to go for over four years, but I had and it was. I can't see the point in trying any of Todiwala's other restaurants if this is as good as it gets.

Indian Khana, Farringdon Road

Mixed grill starter - excellent lamb, chicken, sheek kebab: crispy but still a bit moist. There was a king prawn too which I ate but didn't like. I think I have gone off prawns.

Duck biryani main. Not bad, but it would have been much better as duck tikka biryani really. They swappped the vegetable curry sauce for chana masala without problem, indeed almost with enthusiasm. The chana was OK, though maybe could have been a bit spicier.

Place: Modern — a bit too much so if you ask me. Slightly distracting telly with Bollywood-style music going on, but I was on my own trying to read and sitting right underneath it so maybe I just got unlucky.

Service: Pretty good. Quick, friendly, and the guy actually seemed to give a monkey's whether I had liked the food. Despite its out-of-the-way location between kebab shops and down the road from what seems to be a fetishwear shop, I think this is a pretty good find.

India Club, Strand Continental Hotel, The Strand

An impressively shabby-looking hotel (actually it isn't clear whether the place still operates as an hotel) on the East end of the Strand contains the India Club and restaurant.

The restaurant is a lino-floored, formica-tabled room which resembles quite closely NAAFI bar. Last time I was there the place looked like a building site. This time it had been tidied up a bit but if it has been improved at all, I cannot imagine what it was like before. It's clean but otherwise no expense has been spared spent.

The menu is pretty short, but has many of the usuals. We order some poppadoms and lemon pickle and chilli bhajis to start. The poppadoms are a bit overdone. The lemon pickle is pretty good. And there's a sort of curd thing which might be yoghurt-based with some coconut. It is tolerable on dry poppadoms but not really my sort of thing. The chilli bhajis are medium-sized chillies grilled a bit then batter fried. The batter is a bit thick and doughy rather than crispy, which is a shame. They are pretty pokey though.

Since it's lunch on a work-day I can't have beer. (I do hope one day to go back to working somewhere where the four-pint lunchtime is a-OK, but the trading floor is an unsympathetic place to be pissed.) In fact it wouldn't have been a problem anyway, as this is a BYO sort of place. I order a lassi, but they are "not ready yet" at 2pm. So we stick with the big jug of tap-water on the table.

For actual food we order a lamb madras and a chicken dopiaza with pilau rice. The lamb is lean meat in a dark, rich, hot (but not painful) sauce with, a bit incongrously, onions and green peppers. The chicken is a bit tough, in a light, buttery sauce with onions and peppers. The rice is a bit overdone.

Total bill for two is about 20 quid ex. tip, which seems good value.

It's quite an odd place. After two decidedly ordinary visits I have been left with the feeling that I missed something and that it should have been great. The general shabbiness is quite fun but you might expect a cult place like this to have mastered rice, poppadoms and fried stuff.

NB: No photos or links here because the interweb doesn't really seem to admit that this place exists.

Khas Tandoori, Newington Green Road

Another random evening curry. Despite the wonky picture I've lifted from the web, the Khas has a light, modern décor. It's not particularly recent but hasn't become shabby as cheaply done up curry houses with pretentions tend to. There is music playing which is a bearable sort of Indian-themed ambient electronica, but a bit too loud.

A poppadom and some chutneys are brought when I sit down, but the chutney tray didn't have chilli or lime pickle.

The menu is pretty broad with some unusual things in the "Authentic Delicacies" section and a separate list of "Chef's Delights". Of course they might just be the usual stuff given a different name and vague description — for example, "Zale Zule Chicken (a fairly hot dish from south india)".

My sweet lassi is very good. Not too thick, thin, sweet or dry. They are easy to do, but somehow mine always end up rubbish.

I start with a reshmi kebab which is actually pretty good. The meat is lightly spiced but fried to an almost crunchy texture. There doesn't seem to be any onion or other filler. The two patties are wrapped together in a fried egg ("over easy" to the seppos, ie. lightly-beaten). It comes with a small pot of a dark red, almost purple, sauce, which doesn't seem really to taste of anything.

For my main course, the Achari Gosth Chana ("marinated lamb cooked in a fairly spicy mixed pickle sauce with chickpeas"). It was actually lamb tikka meat in a thick sauce with chickpeas. It was the disapppointment of my visit really. The meat, though lean, was very tough, and the sauce wasn't great though every now and then one could detect a bit of mustard, which was interesting.

Since I am on a lamb theme it seems, I accompany it with Keema Pilau, which is actually really good. Perhaps it's just the Scot in me, but mince with some kind of starchy staple is a great thing¹.

Service was OK, but it took me about 20 minutes from asking for the bill to paying up and leaving. The bill, at under 15 quid is very good value, but I see from the back of the takeaway menu that I should have been able to claim "1 starter, 1 main dish, 1 side dish, 1 nan or rice & 1 papadom" for only 8.95 Tuesday-Thursday, with my lassi an extra 2 quid).

The Khas is next door to the Lucknow Tandoori which I ate at about 18 months ago and don't remember being impressed by.

¹. Recipe: Keema aloo (or "spicy stovies") is a delicious, cheap, piss-easy dish to have on its own or as a side with some other curries. Heat some oil, add some cardamoms, fry a bit of garlic paste and a bunch of ginger paste, add a bit of turmeric and chuck in some mince (lamb mince by preference) and sliced chillies. Fry for a few minutes, then add some peeled potatoes cut into inch-sized cubes. Fry them for a bit, then top up with water and cook until the potatoes are cooked and all the water has been absorbed. Ta-da. If you are making other curries, chuck in some random stuff from the spice rack to make it a different colour from the other things. Your guests will be amazed that you are able to make curries which look and taste different.

Camden Tandoori Curry House, Camden Road

Stopped in for a sneaky Friday night curry at this place. Arriving at 7pm I am the only (probably first) customer. Later on a couple of people come for takeaway.

On the outside it's a very ordinary-looking side-street curry shop, though often with special offer banners. Apparently at lunchtime on Sunday you can get a whole tandoori chicken for a fiver. Inside there are nasty artexed walls about the colour of a raspberry milkshake, but otherwise it's bearable.

I order a couple of poppadoms and a sweet lassi to get me through the menu-examining process. The poppadoms arrive still hot from the frier, and come with pretty good lime pickle and the rest of the usual stuff. The lassi is excellent: sweet/sour, dry/creamy in just the right proprotions.

To start I have a reshmi kebab, which arrvies as a fairly spicy patty of bright red keema (they do not skimp on the food dye here) in a thin omelette. It's pretty good.

Since the sign outside really does announce a "tandoori curry house" I have the balti lamb tikka for my main, with pilau rice and a garlic-stuffer naan. It's a big disappointment: the meat is lean and well-cooked (and dyed bright red), in a thick, dark sauce which looks OK but doesn't taste of anything at all. It's not just bland but somehow completely neutral.

The rice is fine and the naan is passable, if a bit heavy, but the centrepiece is utterly pointless.

The service was fine and the bill, at a little over 20 quid including service was just abut OK. Despite the poor curry, somehow I took a liking to the place, so I might be back to see if they can do any better.

Euro Tandoori, Gray's Inn Road

Second visit to this place. The first was rather better.

The place is mid-refit; most of the surfaces, furniture, &c. are new but there are a few alarming wires sticking out of the wall waiting for lights to be fitted.

I start with the Euro Grill which should be a meaty extravaganza; a bit of lamb tikka, bit of chicken tikka, half a sheekh kebab and an onion bhaji. It's OK but a bit disappointing. Mrs. S. has the "cheese samosa" which turns out to be two small ready-made samosas.

Then I have the ginger murgh, and she has the kind prawn kashmiri. Both are orange and heavy with what I am confident must be generic curry powder. No subtlety and it doesn't taste very good either. Very poor.

Tandoori Nights, Great Queen Street

I came here for an emergency solo Sunday lunchtime curry about six weeks ago. After a bit of negotiation ("Really I don't want takeaway. Yes, I will be able to eat two courses before you close in an hour and a half") I am allowed to sit down and presented with a menu.

Starters look OK and reasonably priced at 1.95-4.95 GBP (the last for a king prawn puri). Unusual things — "bienets de aubergine indienne" (aubergines stuffed with roasted peanuts and herbs) and "hazarvi kebab" (breast pieces of chicken, marinated with home made cheese and spices, skewered and char-grilled). I have the hazarvi thing.

Main courses are more expensive at 6-9 GBP. I have lamb hindustani (lamb with spices and roasted almonds), pilau rice and tarka dall.

Looking around while I wait for my grub, I see that the interior is a bit pink and peach for my taste, with the walls supporting an impressively wide variety of nasty paintings, prints and drawings, but with a beautiful old wooden bar by the door.

My starter arrives as four bit bits of tender chicken breast. It is OK — very slightly cheesy but not really tasting of anything other than roast chicken.

The lamb hindustani consists of lean, gristle-free meat (it's a shame we must be grateful for this) in a fairly bland sauce made gritty with ground almonds. The dall is thick and buttery but plenty chilli, but not really garlicky. Rice is slightly watery.

The portions are OK, but not generous. Total bill comes to 23.50 GBP for the above plus a big bottle of sparkling water. 6/10.

Hot Chilli, Tavistock Place

from the archive

Food: 7.5/10 Service: 7.5/10 Solo dinner ambience: 7/10

Hors d'oeuvres: Poppadoms

• Bog standard crispy things
• OK lime pickle (why do so few curry shops offer chilli pickle?)
• Mango chutney a bit unusual - smoother texture, very glossy, looked almost slightly pink - almost like sweet and sour sauce. Taste still the same as usual if not quite as oversweet as some.
• Yoghurt thing green not yellow
• Onion thing seemed OK on first glance but closer inspection revealed that it still contained small bits of cucumber

Starter: Mixed kebab thing

• Amazingly large portion for 3.50 GBP
• Two big bits of each of chicken and lamb tikka - nicely spicy, tender, well cooked without becoming dry. Top marks.
• Sheekh kebab a bit dry
• Shami kebab seemed to be the same stuff as the sheekh which is lame. It should have lentils and a bunch of extra coriander IMO
• Came on a sizzly dish with nice crispy/caramelised onions

Main course: Lamb dhansak, plain rice

• Dhansak OK - neither curry nor meat were fatty. Pokey enough to get the sweat glands going. Could have done with a wedge of lemon though
• Rice poor - overcooked to the point that you could hardly tell it was basmati

Bevvy: Pint of Kingfisher - cold, not flat or off, hard to go wrong really. Nothing much interesting on the menu, booze-wise.

Have been back once since — about the same the second time. Well worthy a visit.

Short curry reviews

Raj Tandoori, Berwick Street

Had lunch in here while skiving from Christmas shopping. Tiny place which looks like it could only seat 20-30 (maybe there's another room upstairs?). Food was OK, pleasant service. I think I wrote some notes on something but can't find them now.

Rajmoni, Upper Street

I have been to Rajmoni a few times. Last time was after about ten pints of Guinness on Saturday afternoon, and both my wits and hunger were suppressed but having promised the ladies dinner, we were not going to escape having to eat. I don't really remember what the food was like.

Previous experiences have been OK but not amazing. One nice thing is that they keep sending you special offers in the post if you get them to deliver takeaway.

Tasty Spice, Caledonian Road

Cheap takeaway. Curries are so-so, breads ditto, but the tandoori is excellent. Why not get a lamb and a chicken tikka and a portion of vindaloo sauce? (The vindaloo sauce things is an excellent trick — it turns out that most curry houses will do this.)

A telly in the corner seems always to find Coronation Street or the local news. The table at which you can sit while waiting has The Mirror from yesterday and sometime last week.

Has recently changed hands and now has a much longer and slightly more expensive menu ("We have the great pleasure of having one of the most highly renowned chefs from India to prepare your favourite dishes") from which I have not yet eaten.

Hillmarton Tandoori, Hillmarton Road

Another takeaway-only place. The curries and the tandoori are pretty good.

They seem to have better taste in television and reading material.

Veeraswamy, Swallow Street (off Regent Street)

Veeraswamy aspires to be London's premier source of expensive, tasty curry. They claim that "Veeraswamy is the oldest surviving Indian restaurant in the U.K, and possibly the world." which is pretty bold.

The restaurant is on the first floor, so one enters through a weird narrow corridor-cum-cloakroom and a tiny lift. The space is a bit variable; there's a lovely open space by the big windows from which one can look down on the hoi polloi on Regent Street, but most of the tables are hidden in a sightly unfriendly dark bit at the back. Decoration is quite sparse; there is a display of a variety of turbans on the wall and that's about it.

The menu (not on their website, but there is a subset here) is pretty short. Hotter things have chillies next to each other. One is "fairly hot" but not pain-inducing - this is probably only proper given that at a full-price of 15-20 quid one should aim to taste some of it. Only the crab sheek starter has two chillies, and only only one each of the lamb and chicken curries has a chilli next to it.

Starters we've tried include the mixed leaf pakora (crispy fried leaves like mustard greens and maybe bok choi), the crab sheekh kebab.

Like the food at their (rather less flash) chain sister Masala Zone, the curries are very different from each other, generally light in texture but strongly flavoured led by just a couple of spices. The rogan gosht is dark red and rich with cardamom. The lucknawi (or was it hyderabadi?) chicken stew is creamy but still with a good kick.

The bread is excellent. Get the chef's bread basket of the day - three fresh, soft-yet-crispy kinds of tasty bread.

As you can see it has been a while since I was there and I don't remember the food that well. But I do know I enjoyed it.

The portions are not particularly generous, but given the quality it's nice to have an excuse to try more things. If the prices seem a bit steep — I was glad to be on the work dollar the second time — they have a three-course Sunday lunch menu for the bargain 20 GBP per head.

Diwan-e-Khaas, three downtown locations, New York city

Diwan-e-Khaas (motto: "Tradition of caring for your health & taste!") is a small chain (well, there are three of them) of cheap Indian canteens which has provided me with many delicious lunches on my various visits to NYC. I only went once last week as I was collecting material for a forthcoming burrito review.

The setup is a dozen meat and vegetable curries behind a counter in a bain marie and a kitchen in the back from which issues forth an apparently unending series of fluffy, crispy, almost impossibly fresh naan.

There are other dishes on the menu, including biryani and tandoori things, but I tend to stick to what's behind the counter.

My recommended package is the "Executive Lunch Box". This is comprised of rice, a chicken, lamb or vegetable main course of your choice, two vegetable side dishes and one of the aforementioned naans. If this seems a bit too much (or you want more meat at the expense of the other stuff), you can take away a box with just rice and one of the curries.

The curries are OK. The gravy is thin — again, they seem to skip the blended onion base which gives bulk to the cufrries of home — but tasty and they don't skimp on the spices, chilli especially. There seems to be little in the way of herbs or chilli which leaves them with a heavy sort of flavour, if not texture.

The menu is proud to say "No butter added" which I take to refer to fat in general. The chicken is not all (at all?) breast meat and the lamb can be just a little on the fatty side but it's OK, and for the price (7.60 USD for the lunch box, 5.30-6.50 USD for single curry).

One of the Friday specials at the one on Cedar Street seems to be a stir-fried cabbage masala. Since I tend to be shortly to spend a confined six-hours en route to London, I have found it wisest to avoid this so far.

(Incidentally, one of the best things about New York is the range of places you can eat cheap, tasty food which is edible even when not driven to desperation by hunger or booze. However, we all worry about what lurks behind the scenes at these places, especially when reminded of the local cockroach problem. As reassurance (and incentive!) the health department makes available the results of its inspections online. It's sad to see that failure to show a patronising poster about what to do if someone if choking earns a restaurant more violation points than having evidence of live mice in your kitchen, or failure to keep food hot enough to prevent bacteria from multiplying, but it's a good start. I, for one, would like to see London's HSE branch do the same.)

Baluchi, Spring Street, New York City

Two curries last week, both of which from chains. The first was at the Baluchi on Spring Street, Soho (menu). I'd been to the downtown one a year or so ago and this one is very similar in appearance. The bar, tables and much decor are of dark carved wood, serving dishes, water cups and cutlery handles are copper, floor and walls are dark red and terracotta.

A couple of spiced poppadoms appear, with a mango chutney (light and syrupy with some big chunks of perhaps uncoooked mango), tamarind chutney (seems to be standard in the US, and not bad) and the usual yoghurty thing.

The menu is a bit narrow but the curries seem to show a rather greater range than the usual English variations-on-a-heavy-theme curry house menu.

I opened with the Tandoori Combination Platter, which wasn't bad. A big sizzler plate with a couple of big bits (not far short of 2" cubes) of each of (what in the UK would be called) lamb tikka, chicken tikka and tandoori chicken and a big deep-fried prawn thing stuffed with cream cheese. The meat was pretty good — nicely cooked, well marinated, if anything the bits were a bit too big to have taken enough spice flavour. The prawn thing was weird. A single king or tiger prawn, butterflied, stuck to a big lump of cream cheese deep-fried. Even allowing for the theoretical possibilty of cream-cheese having a purpose to its existence it was a bit of deep-fried pointlessness with a limp not-that-big prawn attached.

Main course, just the lamb rogan josh with peas pulao. The curry tasted fine, but the meat was gristly in parts and the sauce had no real body. Rice was stuck together, had no spice flavour and a few garden peas scattered on top.

To drink, a couple of OK mango lassis.

The bill was just about reasonable value at about 36 USD but the whole experience was a bit lacking, nevertheless.

Curry Leaf East, City Road

From the name, one assumes that the new-ish Curry Leaf Easthas a North, West or South counterpart. Perhaps this one is related, but I was not able to find any indication that that is so. Poking around on the interweb I see that is it for sale though apparently, and oxymoronically, "developing into a well-established business".

The interior (with which I was familiar in its previous guise as a nice, if over-trendy bar called "Liquid Lab") is a nice space; narrow and slightly cave-like, with a second floor at the back which isn't visible from the street. The bar is an attractive curved wooden thing with a good selection of the usual whiskies. I am seated at my table for one half-way back, with a weird wooden whalebone thing separating me from the dumb (and live) waiters. The walls are all scuffed at the height of the tops of the chairs. Why oh why oh why don't they paint the damned place on a Sunday when they're closed? The only reason I can think of is that there is nobody with a proper proprietorial relationship with the place to object to this creeping delapidation.

The place feels slightly sterile, which again I put down to too-bright lighting and lack of music. The latter is a matter of taste but eating alone in a restaurant which is three-quarters empty and nearly silent can be a bit soul-sapping.

The menu is contemporary with a lot of unfamiliar options, but not as short as many trendy curry houses. This is actually quite confusing to my booze-addled brain. It's also pretty pricey - starters are all about 4 quid, mains vary from 7-11 quid, pulao rice nearly 3 quid, vegetable sides average about 4.50. It had better be good.

There don't seem to be any poppadom options, nor is anyone else obviously eating them so I grab a waiter (of which there is no shortage) and order.

Once the order has been taken, I am offered poppadoms. This would be annoying were I not hungry enough for pops and a starter. Fortunately I am. They come with a watery minty yoghurt (obviously made from Colman's mint sauce), a runny mango chutney with a few chilli flakes and a little pot of chopped red onion, red and green peppers and, praise The Lord, no cucumber! There is no lime or chilli pickle, though later on I hear an adjacent table request and receive some. My sweet lassi arrives soon thereafter and is good - yoghurty and dry while still sweet and not too thick.

My starter, Chicken Chatpatta - "Juicy fillet of chicken with an unusual blend of hot, sweet and sour flavour. Served with mint sauce." - takes about 25 mintes to arrive and while OK isn't really worth the wait. A big round plate arrives with a small pile of shredded garnish, and a slightly larger pile of little bits of chicken in a dry sauce with some bits of green and red pepper. The sauce is hot and sour and very slightly sweet and interestingly with a slight smoky flavour. The chicken is indeed juicy. The a small pot of mint sauce is bland and not even minty. Indeed, until rereading the menu now I had thought it was a disappointing coriander chutney. In summary, it's a small, poncy chicken pathia. The next course had better be good.

For my main course, I choose Laal Maans (no, I hadn't seen it spelled with an "n" elsewhere either) which is "A traditional Rajasthani speciality of diced baby lamb cooked with dried red chillies and crushed garlic" and which I have rather enjoyed elsewhere. The rice options are plain, jeera pulao, mushroom pulao and special fried rice (onion and tomato flavoured mildly spiced pulao with egg and peas"). I don't like cumin that much but I go for the jeera pulao anyway. I allow myself to be taking into a veggie dish I don't really need, choosing chana masala (extra hot, please). It had better be good.

It arrives and the portions are OK but far from generous. I don't mind as I have ordered too much anyway. It had better be good though.

The rice smells powerfully of cumin though fortunately the taste isn't too strong. A third is buttery yellow, another third is all stuck together. It is overcooked but passable. The curries had better be good.

The laal maans is a little less dark than one might find elsewhere, garnished with a big kashmiri chilli and either semolina or chopped sesame seeds. The sauce has a deep, hot flavour. The lamb is lean, but slightly overcooked. The chana is pretty ordinary but again has a slighty smokey flavour. (Are they using smoked paprika?) Neither of the dishes has that oily sheen - they seem to be careful about adding fat here.

Bill for the above and a second sweet lassi plus added service came to a touch over 28 quid.

It's not a bad place and they've put a fair amount of effort into the menu (or pinching it from elsewhere) but the cooking isn't good enough, the place too scruffy and the service just a bit too slack to justify prices about a 50% over a bog standard curry house.

Smithfield Tandoori, Lindsey Street

Nice place, and relatively tastefully decorated - white walls, wooden floors, no velvet or mirror-and-gilt pictures anywhere to be seen. When I strolled in at 6.30pm, there was one other guy having solo curry, which seemed like a good sign.

A nice chap who I took to be the proprietor showed me my table. I ordered:

• 2 poppadoms
• Sheekh kebab Lahore (it seems to be a feature of their menu to put "Lahore" at the end of things)
• Gosht Bolliram (lamb with coriander and mustard seeds and red chilli. hot)
• Pulao Mogulai

Pops basically as expected, except that the yoghurt thing was bright, radioactive green. Pickle (mixed) might have been hotter.

Sheekh kebab was excellent. Not dry or bright red, just meaty. It did want to be more heavily spiced though. Disconcertingly delivered on a little side plate and a big dinner plate was put in front of me. I even ate the garnish (basically just a bit of shredded iceberg) because it had a few coriander leaves in it saving it from utter tastelessness.

Curry and rice arrived in little china bowls. I can never decide if this is better or worse than the metal things, but it does make it hard to judge portion size. Fortunately that was not a problem here. Curry was great - tender (if oddly-shaped) lumps of lean lamb, rich, dark gravy. The chilli wasn't visible to the naked eye, but it was certainly there. Gravy tasted good, and the occasional surprise of biting into a coriander seed kept things interesting. It was almost hot enough to be hard to eat, but not quite. Rice fragrant with saffron, cardamom and fennel seeds.

Since my mouth was still on fire, I finished up with a pistachio kulfi. It was just one of those ones from a little conical packet, but disguised by taking it out, cutting it into six segments and sprinkling it with a frozen raspberry and half a dozen frozen blackcurrants. Disappointing finish.

Service was excellent - attentive but not annoying, friendly but not impertinent. No hard-sell of bread or extra veggies. Food arrived promptly but didn't feel hurried.

Prices - starters all around a fiver, mains 7-10. Pricier than bog-standard curry, but worth it if you fancy something a bit different to bog-standard curry.

Definitely worth a trip.

Gulshan Tandoori, Exmouth Market

Overall: 5/10 I might consider going back but really the food was not nearly good enough.

Warm-up: 7/10

• Poppadoms OK
• Lime pickle a bit unusual - not thick but rather some biggish bits of lime peel floating in quite a lot of oil. Pretty good, actually.
• Mango chutney pretty good - possibly freshly made as the mango still quite firm. A bit sweet for my liking
• Yoghurt thing obviously made with mint sauce, but OK and at least not yellow
• Onion thing looked really good but still with cucumber, so untested

Prawn Puri: 7/10

• Fairly generous portion.
• Bread might have been a little crispier.
• Unusually, the curry came in a separate bowl. The sauce was a bit thick - I prefer it fairly dry. Used non-frozen prawns, but they were slightly overcooked. Medium heat.
• No wedge of lemon, but at least no salad either.

Lamb madras: 4/10

• Nothing like you expect from a madras
• Sauce not smooth but with little slices of onion and tomato, with quite a rich red colour
• Meat enormously overcooked to the point of falling apart
• Heat a little on the light side

Mushroom pilau: 5/10

• Rice overcooked to the point that you barely tell it was basmati
• Big mushrooms chopped small and overcooked to chewiness
• Whole thing tasted mushroomy, with no nice spice flavours

Keema naan: 4/10

• Dough very heavy - more like supermarket naan than something nice and crisp straight out of the tandoor
• Meaty bit OK texture but not spicy enough

Service: 7/10

• Competent, unobtrusive, fairly polite. Didn't nag about veggie dishes or anything (but then I hadn't exactly under-ordered)

Venue: 7/10

• Nice enough place.
• Gents pretty basic.
• Only hint of naffness was tinselly rope things on the walls.

Value: 7/10

• All the above and two small cans of Perrier for 18 GBP doesn't seem too bad.

Kings Cross Tandoori, Grays Inn Road

Verdict Food: 6/10 Service: 7/10 Solo dinner ambience: 6/10

Hors d'oeuvres: Poppadoms

• Crunchy rather than just crispy. Seeming thicker than the usual ones
• Lime pickle - OK
• Mango chutney - fine, if a bit sweet
• Yoghurt thing - why oh why do curry houses insist on putting turmeric/saffron in the mint stuff? Temple has it right - a bit of mint is all you need
• Onion thing - appeared to contain cucumber, did not investigate as I fucking hate cucumber.

Starter: "Mixed Starter"

• Chicken/lamb tikka - well cooked but almost no spice flavour
• Sheekh kebab - dry, crumbly, fairly tasteless
• Onion bhaji - nice nutty flavour, almost a bit like falafel, but it fell apart upon contact and I was left hoovering up bits of overcooked onion from my plate
• Sizzler dish had far too much oil on it so the onions underneath all this were almost deep-fried rather than just softened and a bit burnt as is proper
• Garnish - generous wedge of lemon (no squeezy device though), wedge of tomato, bit of shredded lettuce

Main course: Lamb don't-remember-the-name (hot, sweet, sour with tamarind), pilau rice

• Alarming deep red, almost purple colour, like raw seekh kebab with too much food colouring
• Fair amount of oil floating on it
• Lamb not quite cooked to tenderness
• Sauce slightly sickly. Seems to have absorbed too much fat/oil.
• Sweet enough but not sour or hot enough
• Rice properly cooked, suitably fragrant, but a bit oily

Beverages Hard to go wrong with Perrier so I had no complaints, but they had just run out of Cobra and Kingfisher which left a lot of other unhappy customers drinking the abominable Bangla.

Bengal Berties, Ballards Lane

Verdict

Food: 7.5/10

Service: 7/10 Solo dinner ambience: 7/10

Hors d'oeuvres: Poppadoms

All bog standard, including the usual complaints about oversweet mango chutney (it's so easy to make I don't know why curry shops persist in buying big buckets of that sugary gunk), unnecessarily yellow minty yoghurt and bloody cucumber in the oniony stuff. I fucking hate cucumber.

Starter: Prawn puri

Puri was OK but should have been a bit more flaky and crispy. Contents were OK (appeared to use fresh prawns which is unusual) but not quite sour enough for my taste.

Main course: Lamb tikka dhansak, pilau rice, chana masala

Dhansak was OK - good heat, but not sour which was a bit of a disappointment. Meat in thin slices instead of chunks which worked well but again, not quite enough spicy marination goodness.

Rice was a bit greasy again, and not quite as fragrant is it should be IMHO.

Chana was good - nice nutty flavour with good texture. No sauce to speak of but still a good spiciness with a nice sour coriander/fenugreek thing going on.

Bevvies

Was in car so stuck with water. Didn't notice what other people were drinking. Did notice that the wine list had Bollinger for 35 GBP which has some potential for amusement.

The Bengal Lancer, Kentish Town Road

My weekly curry craving having come as early as Tuesday, I hop in the car and head over to Kentish Town to visit this place, which was recommended by a colleage.

From the outside, it looks like a high street Italian restaurant, complete with neon sign and floor-to-ceiling windows with cursive etching. Entering, I find the floor is tiled, the lighting soft but somehow unsympathetic. The walls (scuffed and bashed in places) support a mixture of ink-blot abstracts and traditional looking prints of what I take to be the Lancers. Several of the pictures are squint.

Within twenty seconds of sitting down, I have a basket of poppadoms and a tray of pickles (lime pickle, mango chutney, yoghurty stuff). This is more like it. My (adequate) mango lassi doesn't take long to arrive either.

The comically self-congratulatory menu arrives - one starter, comprising fried chicken livers, "you will not find anywhere else", (except the Bangalore Brasserie half a mile away) and one of the main courses ludicrously claims to contain "garden-fresh papaya".

To start, I have "Kon Jee Lamb". This is not like congee, but Chinese crispy shredded beef with lamb and no sauce. It is crispier than its Chinese analogue (that would be lamb rather than beef), very peppery, with fried onions and green peppers and juilienned carrots. There is a lot of it, and it is not bad. Being crispy it is rather harder to eat with a fork than it would be with chopsticks, so I stick it together with mango chutney.

Waiting for my main course I notice that two thirds of the customers (even excluding myself) are blokes eating on their own. This is usually an excellent indicator. I also realise why the place seems so lacking in atmosphere - there is no music. I am not a big fan of background music, but in a place with as little character as this a little would go a long way.

Next to arrive is "gosht kabul" (lamb with chick peas) and a lovely buttery pilao rice, very slightly saffron-y. The lamb is lean, the checkpeas nutty, both just a touch overcooked but the whole tastes more like Irish stew than curry - there simply isn't enough spice. That said, it's perfectly edible.

I plan to be home before Mrs Scoff returns from work, so I don't investigate desserts. The bill arrives fairly promptly when requested: ex. service, it is 18 quid, including a one pound cover charge for the poppadoms. I consider this cover thing is an excellent innovation.

Will I return? Probably not before I have tried other curry shops in the vicinity, but I wouldn't recommend against it.

Bangalore Brasserie, Brecknock Road

The sign outside is of the same design as "Curry Paradise" in Hampstead (which q.v.) and the menu seemed quite similar - maybe they have the same owner. The restaurant was quite pleasant inside for a bog-standard curry house, except for the slightly bilious yellow colour of the walls.

I opened with a couple of poppadoms about which there is not much to say, except perhaps that the lime pickle was made with fine shreds of lime peel rather than big lumps and had big bits of chilli too. It was slightly too salty for my taste, though.

Next the "mixed starter": three little bits of chicken tikka, three of lamb tikka and a small samosa. Meat was under-spiced and just a tiny bit undercooked (I like my tandoori quite dry). It came with minty yoghurt which was about the same colour as the aforementioned walls. Samosa was pretty good - dense and meaty - though also a bit under-spiced.

Main course just lamb dhansak and pilau rice. Dhansak looked good - appealingly dark colour, with still-separate chana dall rather than lentil-y sludge, slightly glossy with ghee but not oily - but it was a big disappointment. The sauce was bland, with none of the promised sourness, and the lamb was so fatty as to be quite unpleasant.

To drink, just a sweet lassi. This was excellent - sour, yoghurty, just a little bit sweet. My only complaint is that it was lukewarm rather than cold as usual.

At a shade under 16 quid, it was pretty good value, but I don't expect to return. Fortunately there are two more curry shops just over the road to try next.

Mirch Masala, Commercial Road

We went mob-handed with a colleague who insisted that it has the best kebabs in London. A look at the menu and some reviews made me keen to test this claim.

Mirch Masala is near the East end of Commercial Road, not far off the bottom of Brick Lane, and just over the road from the famous Lahore Kebab House, which our guide says was once great and is now rotten.

The restaurant is clean and bright as we pass by to visit a nearby off-licence. (In common with most Pakistani restaurants Mirch Masala does not sell alcohol.)

When we return, we are shown downstairs, since they don't have a table which will seat eight. Downstairs is clean and bright too, with the same formica tables, and as we descend I can just about see into the kitchen. Downstairs is also freezing cold. We ask for the heating to be put on, but since the door at the top of the stairway is open it doesn't reallly help. I keep my jacket on.

Shortly, we are presented with poppadoms (spicy, holey kind), fresh minty yoghurt (green!) and tomato/chilli dips and menus. We scrutinise the menus until we are reminded that The Guide will Order for us. To start, we share some vegetable samosas, onion bhajis and aloo tikki (none of which reached my corner of the table), chilli bhajis (which, as a Scottish chilli-head I wasn't surprised to like) and two three-piece mixed grills.

While the boozers tuck into their delicious beer, I have a sweet lassi. It is sweet-but-not-too-sweet, yoghurty-but-not-sour and cold. It is full of air and gone in about a minute.

The mixed grill is the real purpose of the visit. It comprises:

• three sheekh kebabs
• three bits of lamb tikka
• three bits of chicken tikka
• three lamb cutlets
• three chicken wings

which I think is not at all bad for twelve quid. (Apparently there's a four-piece option.) And how was it? Pretty good. With the exception of the chicken wings (I suppose impeded by the skin) it was heavily spiced -- sufficiently so to be quite dark in colour (without artificial colouring). The sheekh kebab was quite coarse, which meant it remained moist while I pretended I wanted the others to have their fair share, and offered the occasional lovely surprise of biting into an intact lemony piece of ginger root. The tikka is exactly how I like it -- cooked just to dryness but no more. The cutlets are thin and still tender. Even the chicken wings are good. Did I mention it was only twelve quid?

I would guess that it was not cooked in a tandoor but over a gas-charcoal grill, as it didn't seem to have that clayey dryness that tandoori tends to have. Does it matter? Well, it tastes different but I would say not better or worse. I suspect cooking the volume of kebabs that this place does in tandoors would be like plate-spinning.

We order main courses when we are done with the starters, to give us a bit of digestion time and the better to estimate remaining gastic capacity. We have a mixture of karahi dishes (all the curries are called "karahi something" though there is a certain amount of congruence with the usual English curry menu), including karahi gosht, karahi prawns, karahi chilli chicken and their speciality butter chicken, a few portions of rice and half a dozen plain and peshwari naan.

When it arrives, I realise that I am not that hungry any more. I valiantly fight down a bit of butter chicken (very very buttery, quite sweet, actually not bad for something with no discernable chilli) and then some chilli chicken. This latter is a bit disappointing. The chicken is a bit overcooked (just bad luck I suppose, since the butter chicken was OK) and the chilli, though generous, is just garnish rather than integral to the gravy. I eat itanyway, and it's OK.

After this, I survey the room like an overfed loon wondering if I can fit any more in before giving up and spending the rest of the evening arguing with a pedantic colleague.

The naans don't look too exciting, and I think confirm my theory about not being cooked in a tandoor.

Happy? Pretty much. Will I be back? Yes, but it will be necessary to wrestle with my conscience to decide whether to give the curries a proper go or just to eat tasty grilled meat again.

Moti Mahal, Great Queen Street

The place is a swish-looking Indian restaurant with a rather fetching window display which looks rather like, but sadly is not, several hundred bottles of whisky.

In other respects, the appearance of shiny modernity is more accurate. The menu is short, the furniture simple but posh, the table staff good-looking Eastern Europeans. In one corner of the room is a glass wall through which you can see some of the kitchen.

We were brought chutneys (coriander, mango, and I think onion) and a bowl containing little poppadoms and two halves of a big spicy one.

I opened with Shami Sheekampur, more delicately spiced than curry-house shami with lamb minced much more finely and something like sour cream in the middle. It was garnished with just a bit of coriander, red onion and an alarmingly pokey sprinkle of chilli powder. The wife had Sagar Rattan, seared scallops and crab cakes. It was "nice", "tasty but not very big" and "hot".

I followed with Laal Maas, "spicy lamb curry from Rajasthan" which was a rich, dark, hot (but not stupid) lamb curry. The lamb was OK, though a couple of bits were a touch fatty. Wifey went for Jhinga Tulsi, "king prawns in basil and smoked paprika". The prawns, large and meaty, and about 30 seconds from tandoor to table (we watched through the aforementioned glass wall), came on a bed of chickpeas. However once more the portion disappointed - the prawns were but a pair and the chickpeas few.

To accompany, we had plain rice (plentiful), a zaffrani kulcha (flaky naan, with saffron and sesame seeds) and Baigan Bhartha, "smoked aubergine mash with cumin and green peas" which was plentiful, if a bit bland (which was fine by me, as I think aubergine is rotten stuff).

We didn't have any booze but the wine list looked OK, there was a short list of speciality cocktails and a smashing long list of whiskies including some rare cask-strength ones.

The bill for two courses without booze was pretty heavy at a shade over 60 quid. All things considered, while the service and pleasant surroundings could justify that, the food did not. Since we were one of only two occuppied tables at 1.30pm on Saturday afternoon if you are minded to visit, it may be wise to do so soon, before this place becomes an All Bar One.