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.

Beers of the World - Ch'Ti

Surprising as it might seem, I have found a nice French beer. Perhaps there are others but there surely can't be many. I am not going to ramble on about it because I have neither the memory (it was Saturday night) nor the vocabulary, but I advise getting hold of some Ch'Ti.

On Saturday I mamaged to get hold of a pair 750ml champagne corked bottles of each of their Amber and Blonde beers.

The Amber (5.9% ABV) is a light brown colour, slightly dry but not gassy — there is no hoppy flavour but a little fruitiness, a little malt but not overpowering.

The Blonde (6.4% ABV) is slightly darker and more viscous than the usual yellow piss.

Neither has any sediment, despite claims on the bottle which appear to be about secondary fermentation, &c. Perhaps it was the spicy food I had just eaten, but neither of them seemed to have much in the way of odour either.

Where to get it? I have, once or twice, seen this stuff in a large supermarket, but the place they can most commonly be found is Budgens. I don't know why a place best known as a source of late-night porn and Ginsters should make the effort to import this stuff but I am glad they do.

NYC Burrito Report

Day 1

"Today" I had a chicken Holy Mole burrito from Burritoville.

It was OK. Tightly packed, fairly generous on the chicken (roasted rather than grilled and not all breast, if any), light on the salad (this seem to help it not to fall apart), uncooked tomato salsa. Not very spicy. Weakest part was the beans which had been overcooked into a sort of grouty amalgam (I think this is intentional, but I am not a fan).

Day 2

Yesterday's lunch was "Bob Marley's Last Burrito" again from Burritoville - jerk chicken and a whole wheat wrapping. Except for the tortilla, it would have been hard to distinguish from the other one to be honest.

I have realised that a Burritoville burrito is basically a big sausage with tortilla instead of skin.

They're OK, but I will be leaving early tomrrow to get to Chipotle instead.

Day 3

Chipotle burrito with carnitas (slow-cooked pork). About mid-way between donkey and 'ville produce in texture. The red tomatilla salsa is pretty good and they have bottles of Tabasco on the tables if it doesn't quite provoke the sweat glands.

The generous portion of meat was pretty tasty (it's cooked with juniper berries among other things, though I couldn't discern any actual gin flavours). Coriander-lime rice is almost pungent - perhaps a little too much lime. The beans are a bit nicer than Burritoville's efforts.

Obviously with slow-cooked pork you can't expect it, but the grilled chicken and beef are pre-cooked in large-ish quantities so I suspect would lack the crispy freshness of donkey fare.

Finally, and perhaps this is because I had to go before I was hungry to avoid the ludicrous queues which form at lunchtime (people will wait over 40 minutes for one of these) it was incredibly filling. I got some chips and salsa for after and couldn't even consider them.

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.