This and That, Manchester

I had to trawl through the archives to work out whether I'd ever written a review of This and That before. It turns out that I haven't, which is something of an oversight.

If you don't know already it's perhaps Manchester's most renowned curry caff. I'm not really sure why it's fame exceeds that of the others, as the formula is identical whichever one you choose. Rice and any three curries, in a room you might politely call basic, for not very much money.

Here we have chick peas, spinach and potato, and lamb and okra. The curries aren't the most vibrant or exciting you'll ever taste, but they are all at least distinct from one another, and more than satisfying when perked up a bit with the self service condiment selection. This and That is one of the best on this front. As well as coriander and chillies there are yoghurt and mint sauces to be had.

£4.80 with a decent, freshly cooked chapatti. They even have a website, on which they make the dubious claim that their rice and three is unique. It isn't, but it's still worth having.

6/10

3 Soap Street
Manchester
M4 1EW

http://thisandthatcafe.co.uk 

Cafe Madras London, Reading

Right, let's get this blog back on topic. What you northerners really want to read about is a South Indian restaurant in Reading, yes? Reading in Berkshire you say? That's the one.

Not interested you say? Oh well never mind. Should you ever have the good fortune to find yourself in Reading, and in need of sustenance, you could do a lot worse than a visit to Cafe Madras London. Which is nowhere near London, being in Reading. I can only assume they named it that to get further up google search listings or something.

Anyhow it's a basic South Indian canteen sort of place, in exactly the same mould of countless others dotted around the country. There are wipe clean menus and tables, stainless steel beakers and jugs, slightly grubby facilities, and the usual range of spicy delights: dosai, idli, kottu, vadai and some very good curries.

The plain dosa was on the limp and flabby side, a bit of a let down really, but the liveliness of the chutneys and a particularly good sambar (sour and earthy all at once) on the side meant I ploughed through the lot anyway.

Chicken chettinad was a blinder of a curry; hot pungent and peppery, the kind of thing I could mop up with rice or bread indefinitely, forgetting my full up mechanism. Which is what I did, with some excellent coconut rice and a greasy in a good way, multi-layered parotta (these remind me a little of how a croissant might end up if you fried one rather than baked one). Only dry chicken breast meat disappointed, but it was largely incidental to the dish anyway (veg or mutton would be better bets).

With a cup of salt lassi and a tip, the bill was still less than fifteen quid. Cheap, quick and in parts outstanding food. Next time you find yourself with a couple of hours to kill in Reading (happens all the time I know) you know where to go.

7/10

73 Whitley Street
Reading
Berkshire
RG2 0EG

http://cafemadras.co.uk/

Curry Leaf, Leeds

When I first spotted Curry Leaf a few weeks ago my interest was piqued immediately. South Indian and Sri Lankan food isn't something that's had much representation in Leeds so this opening is long overdue.

My own experience of this cuisine is largely from basic canteen style places like the Chennai Dosa chain. There are loads of them in London (but very few in the north), all of which stick to a familiar template. Think aggressively spiced, intensely flavoured dishes big on lentils, vegetables, fish, and where meat is concerned, mutton, all served up at rock bottom prices on tin trays.

I wasn't sure whether Curry Leaf would fit the canteen mould or would be aiming a little more upmarket. It's certainly the latter, place mats, proper crockery and a booze license are all the evidence you need. Correspondingly prices aren't rock bottom but are keen enough.

Before we get onto the food I ought to point out that the service was a bit haphazard, some of the waiting staff giving the impression of never having worked in a restaurant before (the guy who sort of lobbed cutlery at us from a distance, as if he didn't fancy getting too close being the best example). I spotted other tables complaining about the length of their waits, and while we weren't exactly served quickly it wasn't that bad.

Both starters were a cut above the cheaper canteen alternatives. Vadai, a sort of lentil doughnut, were freshly fried which they really need to be, as the reheated ones tend to take on the texture of golf balls.

Mutton cutlets were ace, big fat greaseless crumbed balls of tender mutton and soft potato spiced with curry leaves and cloves. I could put away a dozen of these. The only downside to both starters were the little pots of sauce, both of which were nice but not very saucy. There was a fiery sweet onion chutney and a fresher version with chickpeas and coriander, nice as I said but the deep fried goodies were crying out for something more dunkable (standard yoghurt and chilli sauces or a little bowl of sambar would do the job admirably).

Sticking with the mutton, because we don't eat enough mutton and it's lovely, we ordered a mutton kottu which arrived next. A kottu, or kottu roti, is essentially a big stir-fry of meat, bread, spice and veggies. This one arrived with a little bonus dish of mutton curry, as well as the kottu itself being packed with the stuff. The flavour profile was similar to the cutlets, earthy curry leaves and mustard seeds, a hit of chilli heat and the strong taste of the meat (extra lamby lamb!) coming to the fore. It's not subtle but it's very good.

Taking a break from the meat, I did say that vegetables feature strongly in this cuisine didn't I, we also had an aubergine and paneer curry and a bowl of coriander rice. I'm aware that paneer is cheese and therefore not a vegetable by the way, but we'd had a few pints by this point so it seemed like a wise choice. We weren't disappointed, the curry itself had a sweet-sour tomato base that was a good foil to the mild cheese and soft, almost bland aubergine.

We only learned at the end of the meal that they'd been open less than a week, the signage have been up ages in advance, so it's probably fair to put the service issues down to teething problems. They were certainly eager to please, one of the chefs coming over to ask how we found the kottu and hoping it wasn't too spicy. We assured her we'd enjoyed it and would be back. If anything the spice levels were a little too cautious, I'd like to see them ramp it up a bit as I think a good whack of chilli is a fair reflection of the type of food, but I guess others may disagree. The bill came to about £36 including a couple of pints of lager.

All in all a very welcome addition to the Leeds dining scene. I think they've got a few things to iron out but this one could turn out to be a real winner.

7/10

Curry Leaf
2 Eastgate
Leeds
LS2 7JL

Zara's, Crookes, Sheffield

There are few better ways to get over a preconception or prejudice about food than a blind taste test, which is how our meal at Zara's got off to an unexpectedly good start.

If you'd asked me to pass comment on an Indian restaurant that boasted of its 'adventurous chef's specials', then went on to present me with a tray of chutneys in an unlikely combination of fruity flavours I'd tell you it was in all likelihood a load of gimmicky rubbish, and that the food would be crap. There's plenty of precedent for this, nonsense being a particularly speciality of 'Indian' restaurants trying to differentiate themselves from the competition.

One particular example springs to mind, a restaurant where the food was described in indulgent detail, beautifully presented, and brought to the table by the chef himself who introduced himself to my mother by kissing her hand. Shame it all tasted like shit.

Back to Zara's, the chutneys here were presented without fanfare alongside a plate of poppadums and dishes of the regular quartet of curry house offerings (yoghurty, oniony, lime pickle, sugary mango). We proceeded to really enjoy their balanced, interesting flavours whilst failing miserably to identify the contents of all but one. As it turned out they were apple and coriander, tamarind (I got that one right), mango and apricot, and date and coconut.

Grills for starters proper showed a fair bit of skill; seekh kebabs, chicken tikka and tandoori wings were all deftly cooked and properly spiced with no unnecessary colouring. The seekh kebab was particularly good.

Curries, both from the 'Chef's specials' part of the menu, were satisfying if not as good as what went before. One contained shatkora, a lip curlingly bitter-sour citrus fruit apparently used as a flavouring in a lot of Bangladeshi food. I liked it but only in small doses, more than a few mouthfuls being a bit overbearing.

The other was a lamb dish, allegedly Goan style, that was intensely flavoured with mustard seeds and quite strong, gamey meat. I liked this too but the thick, slightly too oily sauce did seem a bit off-kilter with the spicing that would have suited a thinner, soupier curry.

Accompaniments, like the rest of the meal, veered between excellent and just ok. Peas pilau was a fine bowl of rice, rich with plenty of tempered spice including cumin and cinnamon. On the other hand the naan bread was a bit limp.

Zara's is certainly a cut above your average high street curry house and some things are done very well. Did I mention they also do some really nice fruity chutneys? Service was fine but the food did take an age to arrive. We paid £46 for pickles, poppadums, starters, mains, sides and two large bottles of beer to share.

7/10

216a Crookes
Sheffield
S10 1TH

http://www.zarasrestaurant.com/

Mint and Mustard, Cardiff

I really ought to have given the website for Mint and Mustard, an upmarket Indian restaurant in the Cardiff suburbs, more than a cursory glance before dining there. Had I done so, I'd have realised that they specialise in Keralan food, and wouldn't have ordered a whole load of North Indian stuff.

Being a bit hungover I was in the mood for a lamb-based feast, when seafood, vegetables and even pork or beef could have been a better plan. Or would have been a better plan, as most of what the others in our group of six ate was better than what I did.

After some poppadums and pickles, complimentary after we had to wait a few minutes for our table, seekh kebabs and onion vadai (in this case the same thing as what most curry houses would call a bhaji) to start. These were just ok, being a good demonstration of the pitfalls of 'posh Indian' restaurant food, in that they looked pretty but tasted dull.

The kebabs were nicely spiced but needed salt and seemed to have been cooked without resort to anything very hot. Surely the whole point to Indian grilled meat is the generous application of fire, spice and salt? Other starters of lamb,venison and prawns in various guises were all declared a great success.

Saag gosht and chicken makhani were both competent, flavour packed dishes. The lamb had a slow-burning, building warmth, and the makhani was smooth, rich and sweet with fenugreek. They weren't half as exciting as what was going on elsewhere on the table though, I got to sample the lot and first mouthfuls suggested there might be some genuinely great food on offer here.

The sauce (pollichathu?) on what I think was a fat hunk of swordfish had an intense flavour that belied it's thin texture, dense with the savoury funk of curry leaves. I'd have drunk it in pints given the opportunity. Another fish dish, sea bass with a tart, bright moilee sauce was almost as good. I wasn't quite so enamoured of a dum pukht biryani, although it tasted great I thought the rice was a bit wet.

There are a whole host of European styled dishes on the menu too, European in the plating sense: large slab of protein, mound of carbs and some veggies on the side. I was suspicious of these, with their various Indian-spiced riffs on the mash theme, but a mouthful of the most succulent, precisely cooked piece of pork, the best bit of meat I've eaten in a while, convinced me they could be worth a shot. Sadly I didn't try the accompanying cassava mash, so whether that was an inspired or daft idea I'm not sure.

Sides of pilau rice and a very light, crisp naan were exemplary, as was service throughout the meal. Including a bottle of wine and six or so beers the bill came to around twenty seven quid each before tip, which seemed reasonable for the quality of the food. Well worth a visit, just remember to head South when making your menu choices. My rating could well have been a couple of points higher had I done so.

7/10


134 Whitchurch Road
Cardiff
CF14 3LZ

http://www.mintandmustard.com/

Caribbean Food Stall, Kirkgate Market, Leeds

I'm not sure what the name of this place is, or whether it even has a name, but it's a relative newcomer on Butchers Row selling hot Caribbean food. I think they might have started out with a weekly slot at the Source, so it's good to see them progress to being a fully fledged business trading on the market.

You can takeaway or eat in at the handful of tables they have inside and out on the row. Chicken meals are all four quid and curry goat is a fiver. The goat was good stuff, stewed slowly on the bone to melting tenderness. The sauce holding it was deceptive, seeming a bit boring at first but building with fruity scotch bonnet heat.

Rice and peas were the coconutty real deal and soaked things up nicely. Side salad was limp and undressed, but salad isn't really the point of this meal.

A wider range of cooked and ready to eat food stalls is one of the things I think the market really needs, so I hope they manage to make a success of this. Sadly if it didn't last I'd hardly be surprised. For the moment, along with Maxi's Rotisserie there are two good places for lunch filling the gaps on Butchers Row. Use them or lose them.


7/10

Butchers Row
Leeds Kirkgate Market
Leeds
LS2 7HY

Mumtaz, Bradford

I might just be falling out of love with Mumtaz. I’ve been a big fan since my first visit to the original Bradford restaurant 7 or 8 years ago, and have never been disappointed with a meal there or in the Leeds branch.

Not everything they produce is quite so good though. The supermarket ready meals are a mixed bag (although still better than virtually all the store own branded versions) and I’ve had poor food from the Jaldi Jaldi takeaway outlets. There were just a few signs in our Bradford meal over the weekend that all might not be well in mothership of the empire either.

That’s not to say we weren’t well fed though. Some things were very good, like they always have been. The pickle tray has always been a cut above, and still is. The tamarind chutney is gooey and tangy and lovely, there are two varieties of raita both made with proper, thick yoghurt and the lime pickle is fierce. What the hell the cheap pitted black olives are doing there I have no idea but I’m willing to overlook them as a foolish mistake.

A piece of chicken tikka on the bone was even hotter than the lime pickle, surprising but not in a bad way. The heat was tempered by lovely bits of charred marinade, singing with ginger, encasing still tender meat.

It was the curries that let the side down a bit. Both a karahi lamb and a karahi channa tasted a bit mass-produced, a bit like commodity curries made in bulk from a base paste. I could be completely wide of the mark but I have a sneaking suspicion they pre-cook everything in the same kitchen that supplies those ready meals and takeaways.

If I’m right then they still scrub up well after being fried in a good splash of ghee with extra ginger, garlic and coriander. I was merrily scooping away with my roti for ages. Something was slightly lacking though, they didn’t have that vibrancy and depth of flavour I seem to recall from visits past.

Back to the usual high standard with the bread though, each tandoori roti costing 85p a pop was thin, beautifully crisped and absolutely bloody enormous. They know how to cook rice too.

I haven’t fallen out of love with Mumtaz yet, and I hope they don’t give me cause to. A visit here is always a pleasure, the huge, bling, marble clad restaurant is an experience in itself and I like the atmosphere, lively with the chatter of families rather than the clatter of the booze-fuelled. That lack of booze also makes it nigh on impossible to spend over fifteen quid a head. We paid £28 including a tip. 

7/10

Great Horton Road

Bradford

BD7 3HS

www.mumtaz.co.uk

Chappati Corner, Cheetham Hill, Manchester

The cheap and cheerful theme is continuing round here at the moment, I've not been out for a meal costing more than a tenner in weeks. I had to travel from Salford up to Oldham a few days ago, and with only six quid on me and a large appetite a curry café visit en route through Manchester was inevitable.

Chapatti Corner is one of several on the Cheetham Hill Road strip, none of which I'm familiar with.  Selected completely at random it did the job with aplomb. A colossal portion, reasonably distinctive curries (far better than the beige slop appearance would suggest) of which the chickpeas were the best and added zip from a generous topping of ginger, coriander and chilli.

Given the name of the place I had to order a chapati on the side, anyone hanging the name of their restaurant on one particular foodstuff ought to make sure they do it well. Thankfully they did. The bread was the best thing about the meal, big, light and crisp, probably the best bread I've had in a curry caff and a bargain at 50p.

I was charged a fiver for rice and three curries, less than the £5.80 advertised on the menu, and handy given I needed my spare quid for that chapati. Cheap, satisfying food in a grubby caff, cricket in Urdu on the telly. That's how they roll in Cheetham Hill.

6/10

Chappati Corner
Cheetham Hill Road
Manchester

Two lamb curries

I'm really going to have to fight the urge to have a moan again. If people aren't stealing things from me at the moment (passport, driving licence, phone et al) I'm breaking my own things by dropping them (another phone) or having things taken from my grasp at the last moment just when all the arrangements have been made (a house). And it's raining. Woe is me.

I will fight the urge. No more complaining. This is a food blog, not a lifestyle complaints blog, and I'll never win any awards if I carry on like this. That, in case you were wondering, was a not very subtle hint.

*Shameless self promotion alert*. I'm very lucky to have been shortlisted in the category for 'Best food and drink blog' at the Blog North Awards, so on the off chance you like what you read here, your vote would be greatly appreciated. Failing that I'd recommend that you take some time to read some of the other blogs on the shortlist, there are plenty of talented people in the North sharing their words and thoughts.

Back to the real point of this post. If your spirits are down and it's pissing it down, what better remedy than to cook a curry. This is really just the one curry, split in half at the last and customised two different ways for a slightly different finished article.

Both versions are gently warming, aromatic rather than fiery, and richly satisfying with either rice or bread. The aubergine version has a smokier taste, the chickpea one is nutty with a pleasing tang and sweetness from the addition of tamarind.

This takes around 3 hours from start to finish but you'll only actually be doing anything for half an hour or so. It might look like a lot of ingredients and effort, but it really isn't. For the most part it's a case of throwing stuff in a food processor and leaving a pan to simmer.

Serves about 4-6 people in total

Base ingredients
2 onions
tin tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
900g lamb shoulder
bunch coriander leaves
vegetable oil

Wet curry blend
8 cloves garlic
1 or 2 long green chillies
2 thumb sized piece of ginger
stalks from a bunch of coriander

Dry curry blend
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 dsp cumin seeds
3 cardamom pods
1 stick cinnamon
2 cloves
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp fenugreek seeds

for the aubergine version
6-8 baby aubergines
1 tsp cumin seeds
oil and sea salt

for the chickpea version
400g tin chickpeas
1 dsp tamarind sauce

What to do

1. Peel and quarter the onions, then chuck them in a food processor and blitz until finely chopped. Put them in a large pan to sweat on a low heat with a splash of oil.

2. Roughly chop all of the wet curry blend ingredients, then chuck them in the food processor and blitz into a loose paste with a splash of water.

3. Put all of the dry curry blend ingredients in a dry frying pan and heat over a medium heat until they start to brown just a little and become aromatic. Tip them into a spice grinder or pestle and mortar, leave to cool for a few minutes then grind to a powder.

4. Trim and chop the lamb into bite sized chunks. The onions should have started to soften by now so remove them from the pan, turn up the heat and throw in the lamb to brown it.

5. After the lamb has browned for a few minutes remove it from the pan and put it with the onions. Put the pan back on the heat and throw in the wet curry blend. Fry, stirring so it doesn't stick, for a minute or two. Add more oil if it needs lubrication.

6. Throw the dry curry blend ingredients into the same pan and fry for another minute or two, then add the onions and lamb back into the pan, and fry for another couple of minutes.

7. Pour in the tin of tomatoes plus one empty tin's worth of water, then add the tomato puree and give it a good stir. Bring to a gentle simmer, put a lid on the pan, and leave it be for a good two hours. Give it a stir after an hour or so if you feel like it.

8. After two hours the sauce should still be quite runny but the lamb should be tender. At this point set the oven to maximum heat, prick the aubergines then give them a coating of oil, sea salt and a teaspoon of cumin seeds.

9. Split the curry into two separate pans, half in each. Put the aubergines into the oven, roast the hell out of them until the edges are slightly blackened and the innards mushy. This will only take ten minutes or so.

10. Into one pan of curry put the chickpeas, drained of all the can juices, and a spoonful of tamarind sauce (you could make tamarind juice up yourself from pulp, but I find this works just as well). Bring it to a gentle simmer with the lid off for about twenty minutes.

11. Bring the other pan of curry to a gentle simmer as well, and keep it bubbling gently with the lid off. As soon as the aubergines are ready chuck them straight in.

12. The curries are ready to serve as soon as the sauce has reduced to your liking. Garnish with coriander leaves and eat with rice and breads.

Northern Food on tour: Festival food at Latitude

Last year I talked about how much festival food has improved since the dark days of the tinned burger. You'd think with the ongoing obsession with street food that this steady improvement would continue, what with all the dedicated folk selling interesting food from vans and stalls around the country. So how did I get on at Latitude?

Not bad, but could do better I reckon. Maybe I chose unwisely but I think (the much smaller) Standon Calling just edged it. From best to worst, here's what to look out for and what to avoid should you be braving the mud before the summer is out.

Disclaimer: significant consumption of alcohol may have rendered everything in this post misguided, incorrect or at least completely meaningless.

Lamb Kofta, from Kebabylon (£6.50-ish)

I know it doesn't look great, but when did a badly packed kebab ever look great? The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and this passed the test. A generously proportioned succulent kofta, interesting salad, bread that wasn't stale and a generous splodge of hummous. Which wasn't really hummous at all, more mashed up chickpeas. No matter, yoghurt sauce, hot sauce, job done.

Malay style lamb and potato curry on noodles, generic Thai and Chinese food stall (£7)

I doubt this was the best quality food I ate all weekend, but it bloody well hit the spot. Probably because there was about 2000 calories in it. A massive meaty carb load backed up with considerable hits of sugar, salt, spice and grease. All things nice effectively.

The lamb was genuinely very tender and quite delicious though, I'm sure of that. A little bit rendang-esque.

Large chilli beef burrito, Flaming Cactus (£7.50)

All aboard the burrito bus. You can't miss it, it's big and silver. I'm thinking a surfeit of carbohydrate may have had something to do with my fondness for this one too. Having said that it wasn't a tedious chore like eating these things often is, the salsa had a zip to it and it wasn't overloaded with rice at the expense of more interesting fillings. Rightly so too at £7.50 a pop.

Margherita pizza, wood-fired pizza place (£6)

This was just a bit too boring. Good texture and nice char to the crust but little flavour in either the mozzarella or the tomato sauce. Little flavour in the chilli oil I administered liberally to liven it up either. Or the basil leaves for that matter.

Footlong dog, Footlong Hot Dog stall (£4)

A bouncy, dense meaty sausage that didn't taste cheap was let down by very stale bread. Shame. Why the hell I put mayo on it I'm not really sure. Most likely a case of 'sauce is free therefore make the best use of it possible'.

Chicken and seafood paella, a Spanish place (£6.50)

The paella of shame. Actually don't call it a paella, it doesn't deserve it. At last year's festival I got real paella, made with meat on the bone and paella rice. This one didn't involve either of those things. Think overcooked savoury rice with dried up bits of chicken breast and added frozen mixed seafood bits. Crap. Sadly I can't remember the name of the stall selling it.

Chennai Dosa, Stretford, Manchester

Chennai Dosa, a small chain of cheap and cheerful South Indian restaurants has opened a branch in the Stretford Mall in Manchester.

I’ve eaten at Chennai Dosa before a few times, most memorably in the Wembley branch before a match up the road. It’s a funny sort of place Wembley, the stadium itself situated in a sort of no-mans land of retail parks, roads and other detritus, apart from the rest of the area.

Most people heading to the stadium arrive at Wembley Park station to the East, and walk straight up the pedestrian precinct of Wembley Way and into the ground without any interaction with the surrounding suburb, but a few fans always end up at Wembley Central on the High Road in the middle of town. 

It’s a fairly typical London high street, bustling with commerce, most of the businesses independent and apparently thriving, and in Wembley’s case, mostly run by British Indians.

You can usually spot those who are stadium-bound but travelled there by mistake. There are often a few small groups of them, first time visitors down from the shires, wandering around in replica shirts, looking a little confused and unsure of themselves. The real Wembley; - scruffy, lively, independent, Indian, is somehow at odds with the corporate bastion of flag-waving Englishness up the road, and has come as a shock to the system.

It’s here that you’ll find a Chennai Dosa outlet, and I love it. The food doesn’t amaze, but it’s assertively spiced, tasty, filling and ridiculously cheap. There’s also the added fun to be had in watching Gladys from Mansfield, who just wants some food before the England game, perusing the menu and wondering what the hell idiyappams and kottu parotta and rasam vadai are.

So Chennai Dosa are expanding northwards, which is a very good thing. More people should know what the hell idiyappams and kottu parotta and rasam vadai are.

There’s still a dearth of Indian food in the North that doesn’t fit the typical British curry house Pakistani/Punjabi mould, particularly at the cheap and cheerful end of the market. There are posher places in West Yorkshire (Prashad, Hansa’s) and a few more mid-range restaurants scattered about (in Sheffield, Liverpool and Ashton-under-Lyne that I’m aware of, there are probably more) but only Dosa Express in Manchester is really a budget caff.

In terms of service, Chennai Dosa is a restaurant, but everything else is canteen style. Stainless steel jugs of water, beakers and school dinner plates; no frills wipe clean surfaces; and the fact that nothing on the menu costs more than five quid, or £4.99 to be precise.

The food at the Stretford branch is exactly the same as in Wembley; spicy, cheap and filling. Rasam vadai (£2.10), lentil doughnuts in a soupy lentil curry weren’t too heavy (sometimes eating vadai can be like ploughing through dark matter mixed with clay) and turned to a pleasing mush in the hot, sour tamarind laced rasam.

Sticking with the lentils (there are a lot of lentils involved at Chennai Dosa) I had a paneer masala dosa (£3.50) next. That’s a rice and lentil flour pancake stuffed with curried potatoes and cheese, served with sambar and chutney’s. 

Crispy pancake scooped up in hot, fresh chutney with the added bonus of cheese. What more could a vegetarian wish for? The potatoes were a bit bland though. Non-vegetarian options are also available by the way, anything with mutton in it will be worth a try.

I drank the tap water that was already on my table, so the bill was just £5.60 plus tip for a two course lunch in a restaurant with actual table service. They’re licensed too, and beer costs £2.99 a pint. Hopefully the expansion plans include Yorkshire.

7/10

Unit 119 Chester Road
Stretford Mall
Stretford
Manchester
M32 9BH

www.chennaidosa.com 

Banana Leaf, Glasgow

Glasgow's West End is a great place to eat Indian food. There are several restaurants and cafes all within walking distance of one another (and also all owned by the same people) that have served me some really fantastic food over the last few years. This meal at the Wee Curry Shop was wonderful, and prior to starting the blog I dined well at two of the Mother India places.

Banana Leaf, a budget South Indian cafe and takeaway in the same part of town (but not under the same ownership), has had loads of great press so I was hoping it would live up to the high expectations.

First thing to note: go elsewhere if you want a nice restaurant. This is very much a caff and takeaway, and a bit on the grotty side at that. Don't let that put you off though, budget South Indian places always seem to be a bit scruffy and none of them have poisoned me yet (and they did have hygiene certificates on the wall).

The food is cheap, and the menu predictable for anyone familiar with cheap and cheerful South Indian food. There are dosai, vadai, idly's, sambar, loads of curries and dry-fried dishes.

Being greedy and having not had one in ages I ordered a plain dosa (£4) as well as a non-veg set meal (£7.50).

I couldn't fault the dosa, it was thin and light without being so thin it crumbled to nothing. Just the right texture for scooping up the chutney's and sambar which were all good. Fresh, bright tomato and coconut chutney's and a deeply savoury sambar tempered with loads of mustard seeds and curry leaves.

The set meal included (clockwise from top right) more sambar, raita, mixed veg curry, chicken curry, chapattis and rice. I could have eaten the chicken gravy, sambar and rice all day, lovely stuff. The chicken curry gravy matched the sambar for savoury deliciousness, having a stock base built up from bone-in chicken. The rice was fluffy loveliness.

The veg curry was a little too sweet and watery and the chapattis were rubbish (thick, doughy). Forget the breads here and stick to rice or pancakes.

I enjoyed this, the only thing missing was a bit of a chilli hit. Everything was very mild for South Indian food. I'm sure the Glaswegians can handle a bit of spice so I'm not sure why it was all so toned down. Having said that if I had somewhere like this anywhere near my house I'd be in there once a week.

Pretty good for £13 including a soft drink and tip. It's also handily positioned just round the corner for pre- or post-curry beers at Brewdog Glasgow. Worth a visit.

7/10

76 Old Dumbarton Road
Glasgow
G3 8RE

http://home.btconnect.com/glasgowproperty/bananaleaf/banana.html

Akbar's, Leeds

It's taken me a while to get round to writing this review. I was umming and ahhing about whether to bother at all. I was a little merry at the time of eating and the details are proving elusive. No matter I thought, I'll ask my dining companions what they thought, make it a bit of a combined effort. That didn't really help either, everyone was fairly up to speed on the starters but things got a little sketchy from thereon.

I'm reviewing it anyway because I like Akbar's, always have, ever since a visit to the original Leeds Road branch in Bradford around a decade ago. I've always found their meat curries reliably good, their tandoor cooked food (grilled meat and breads primarily) excellent and the service efficient. They also seem to have managed to maintain that consistency as they've expanded in recent years.

Three of us ate at the Greek Street outpost the other weekend. It's a good place for Friday night beer and curry, and by the time we arrived after nine it was heaving with well lubricated diners. The atmosphere was festive to say the least. Don't come here on a first date, really don't. Think raucous bearpit, not romantic hideaway.

Anyhow, after a bad start of three pints of completely flat lager, which instead of sending back we drank before moving onto bottles, a feast was duly ordered sticking to the Akbar's strengths. Grilled stuff, meat curries and bread.

Liver tikka was slightly overcooked, but still delicious. This is a great dish. Think rich, smooth slightly metallic liver enhanced by a tangy, hot marinade. Beautifully soft inside, charred edges with lots of little nibbly crusty bits.

The paneer tikka was also very good. Not bland or rubbery, with a mild but pronounced lactic taste. Again with the same contrast of a soft centre and crusty grilled edges.

We also had a piece of masala fish which was probably nice but who knows? It certainly looks well.

The three curries involved lamb, chicken with keema (bonus lamb!) and something else which escapes me. None of them were exceptional in any way (I'd have remembered exceptional, I hadn't had that much to drink) but they were all a pleasure to eat scooped up with the excellent naan bread.

Which brings me to the naan tree. Some people consider these to be a rather daft gimmick, but to my mind they actually serve a purpose. For me, a good naan bread is all about the texture. That winning combination of a light, fluffy interior and a gently cracking crust, browned where the dough is in contact with the clay of the tandoor whilst it cooks.

Breads served flat, often piled upon one another, keep warm longer but have a tendency to go a little soggy, losing that crucial contrast between crust and insides. Breads served on the tree cool quicker but retain that vital crispness for longer. I'd rather eat cold, crisp naan bread than warm, soggy naan bread.

Whatever your thoughts on this matter I can confirm this: we had a massive naan bread on a naan tree and it was ace. We also had a couple of tandoori rotis but these were a bit pants, being too thick and doughy. Stick to the naans.

Service, as ever, was efficient. They really do a good job here, front of house and in the kitchen. It can't be easy speedily serving a full restaurant, with a bar full of people waiting, most of whom are probably well on the way to being sozzled, but they rarely miss a beat. It's still great value as well, we paid just over £20 each for all of the food, a couple of beers each and a well earned tip.

It's a bit difficult rating this when I can barely remember what the curry tasted like, but it's not like I've got a systematic quantitative approach to ratings anyway, so who cares. I'm giving them 8 out of 10. Call it a gut feeling. I like Akbar's.

8/10

Minerva House
16 Greek Street
Leeds
LS1 5RU

http://www.akbars.co.uk/