Tag: Hot food

All change for the drunks

On By Daniel FordIn 4. TakeawaysLeave a comment

Simply Indian, Aldershot (Takeaway) UPDATE

Since my last visit Simply Indian has become a takeaway because “we can’t continue to deal with the hassle and the drunks.” Very sad because when it was a BYO and I was told enthusiastically, “we just want to concentrate on good food,” this was a great little restaurant.

The guys in charge are still friendly but there is a sense they’ve lost heart. Seeing a shell of what was a nice friendly restaurant is a bit sad and although the space means the waiting area is large, as it would if you convert a restaurant into a takeaway, it feels a bit ramshackle. Shame on you hassle people and drunks.

The basic Chicken Rogan (£5.95) and Pilao Rice (£2.30) was decent enough but this is no longer a place you’d go out of your way to visit.

• Simply Indian, 14-16 Station Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 1HT. Tel: 01252 330 070 or 01252 336 667. Open: Daily 5.30pm-11pm.

Simply Indian snapshot

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Went to Coventry

On By Daniel FordIn 2. Reviews (Other UK)Leave a comment
Akbars, Coventry
(Review by IF of GCC Coventry branch) 

This was not the first visit by to Akbars by the GCC’s Coventry branch but unlike previous occasions we were treated to a surprise. On entering the previously small (15 tables) narrow shop fronted, cramped, old-style restaurant in the run down, edge of the town street, we were pleased to find that it had been transformed into a modern expansive and vibrant venue that had increased its capacity fivefold by extending behind the adjoining properties.Service was attentive but not overbearing and the mix of ages and genders made for a lively and pleasant atmosphere. We were seated at a table for eight with ample room for manoeuvre and were surrounded by groups of various numbers all dressed up for a good time early on a Saturday evening.

The menu contained all the old favourites and was supported with more adventurous recipes. The Tandoori Pollack cooked in 12 spices and Royal Cumin was… delicious. Starters were a decent size and deliciously spiced to set the taste buds up for the main event. Prices ranged from £3.95 to £5.50 with main courses from £9.95 to £14.95 and the general opinion around the table was of good quality food at a reasonable price.Akbars is highly recommended to visitors to this industrial wasteland and emerging university campus.Akbars, 7-9 The Butts (Queen Street), Earlsdon, Coventry, CV1 3GJ. Tel: 024 7622 2213 or 024 7622 8899. Open: daily 5.30pm–midnight.

Akbars snapshot

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Akbars on Urbanspoon

Hurray! Back to the ’90s

On By Daniel FordIn 1. Reviews (London)Leave a comment

Darjeeling, London, SE13

You could be forgiven for thinking you’d been transported back to the 1990s when you visit Darjeeling in Lewisham. Not because the decor is tired, because once past the garish pink sign that announces the place it’s pretty smart and contemporary.

But, joy oh joy, you’ll be transported back by the prices. Eyes were popping out and gasps were heard from around the table as the menus were opened.  “This is the place to order king prawn,” was a good shout. And when the usual, “we’ve ordered too much,” was heard it was decided that this was the place to pile high the table and taste new dishes, even if we had over-ordered (does anyone ever under-order in an Indian?)

And so the dishes came… Malai Lamb Chops (£2.85) marinated in cream cheese and spices, so tasty you’ll be sucking on the bone long after the meat has gone, the favourites Chicken Chat (£2.05), Sheek Kebab and Shami Kebab (both £1.95) and a more unusual Spicy Calamari (£2.85) that was stir-fried with onions, peppers and chilli.

It’s becoming popular for restaurant to have an Old Favourites section in a grid and Darjeeling’s, which starts at just £3.15 for a Chicken Curry, was raided for a Chicken Madras (£3.45). But most in the party opted for something a bit different, including Lamb Randaam (£6.85) a very hot and very red dish cooked with tart tamarind, Chicken Morisa (£6.85) another hot dish with fresh green chillies, Lemon Chana Chicken (£5.35) with chick peas, an ideal order for people who find Achari dishes a bit too tart. Meat lovers should look no further than the main version of the Malai Lamb Chops (£5.60).

But come on, let’s over-order. Add Tarka Dall, Mushroom Bhaji and Bombay Aloo (all £2.05 as side dishes or £2.95 as mains), a good selection of rice (Plain at £1.65, Sabzi and Special at £2.25), nans (Plain at £1.55 and garlic at £1.65) and wrap up with a couple of Chapatis (£1.15).

Is it any wonder the place was buzzing midweek?

Darjeeling, 134 Lee High Road, Lewisham, SE13 5PR. Tel: 020 8473 8222 or 020 8852 5566. Open: daily 5.30pm–11.30pm, Sat and Sun noon–2.30pm.

Darjeeling snapshot

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Darjeeling Indian on Urbanspoon

A place to watch

On By Daniel FordIn 2. Reviews (Other UK)Leave a comment

Am Kitchen and Bar, Leeds

There can few better surroundings in which to eat a curry than Am Kitchen and Bar. There’s the pay-through-the-teeth grandeur of legendary place like London’s Veeraswamy, of course, or the feet-in-the-sand style of Karma Café in Goa, but right here in the centre of Leeds there is a gem of a curry house.

Based in a former watchmakers, the property is a Listed Building boasting two levels with a large open well in the middle where you can look down on diners below, beautiful chandeliers, and a mind-boggling amount of intricate glass work panels and display cabinets. The necessary contemporary elements needed to operate a restaurant are incorporated into the space well, in particular the way the light grey high-backed chairs offset the dark wood of the tables. But best of all for the Greenwich Curry Club is a superb Greenwich Mean Time clock that takes centre stage over the bar that faces the entrance.

Greenwich Mean Time Clock. It's one of those that's only correct twice a day…

It’d be easy to get distracted from the main reason for being here, yet the Chicken Balti (with extra garlic as requested) delivered that beautiful fresh taste that baltis should and is well priced at £8.55, while there was also no problem adapting a hearty Keema Madras (£8.55) by adding some fresh green chillies. If you’re a starter fan you’ll struggle to find tastier Lamb Chops (£4.25); for a large table of people who can think of a better way to start the communal evening than with a large of pile of these?

By the end of the first bite I’d forgiven the staff for (what appeared to be) a deliberate policy of keeping people waiting at the entrance to ensure the front of house table are always occupied rather than filling up the empty places upstairs. In fact I was rather pleased because Briggate on a Saturday night is ideal for people watching. Coats are a complete no-no even as temperatures plummet. Instead boys seem particularly keen on tops so tight it looks like they’ve just got out the gym and girls on skirts so short that Am Kitchen’s very large Rotis (£1.10 each) would offer more cover.

Am Kitchen and Bar, 24-26 Briggate, Leeds, LS1 6EP. Tel: 0113 242 2626. E-mail: info@amkitchenandbar.com 

Am Kitchen and Bar snapshot

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Recipe… Bunny Chow with Chicken Curry

On By Daniel FordIn Recipes2 Comments
Right, now let’s get stuck in…

Bunny Chow with Chicken Curry
Serves 2

It’s simple, it’s rustic and it’s tasty… it’s a bunny chow! You’ll find someone selling them on every street corner in Durban, South Africa. Ideal for that steamy tropical climate, yet also great comfort food as the winter approaches in London. Cut off the bottom of a loaf, scoop out the white stuff leaving a crust shell. Fill with hot chicken curry (don’t forget the sauce now), settle down and use the bread you scooped out to mop up and eat your curry. No cutlery permitted.

Durbanite and bunny chow lover Richard says bunnies are best eaten sitting cross-legged while staring at the Indian Ocean with a bottle of ice-cold Coke by your side.

What you need
• 1 loaf of bread (it is best to use a loaf that has been left a day since buying it)
• 1/2 recipe Handi Chicken

How to make it
1. Cut the loaf in half and scoop out the bread
2. Fill each hollowed out loaf with the chicken

Become a curry chef

On By Daniel FordIn Curry NewsLeave a comment

Fancy yourself as a bit of a curry chef? Now’s your chance to learn from some of the best. Cinnamon Kitchen (see review) is offering masterclasses from executive chef Vivek Singh or other curry kings such as head chefs Abdul Yaseen (Cinnamon Kitchen) and Hari Nagaraj (Cinnamon Club) in the surrounds of one of London’s best Indian restaurants.

Dates
Saturday 21 January: Detox with Abdul Yaseen
Saturday 25 February: Curry, classic and contemporary with Vivek Singh
Saturday 24 March: Seafood special with Rakesh Ravindran

Cost: £175

Bookings: events@cinnamon-kitchen.com

Where there’s smoke there’s tikka

On By Daniel FordIn 2. Reviews (Other UK)Leave a comment

New Jomuna, London, SW1V

I’m a sucker for the sizzle of tandoori on a hot serving plate so it was no surprise that as soon I saw a Chicken Tikka starter (£3.70) coming out of the serving hatch, I’d be ordering the same myself. But for all the sizzle and smoke in New Jomuna (and there is a lot of smoke in the upper section where the food comes out) there wasn’t much taste. The chicken was tender, the marinade was red, but alas that famous tandoori taste had left the building.

Oh dear, I thought. It really takes an effort to persuade my friend who is sitting opposite me to come out for a curry – not because he doesn’t like it, it’s just that his Indian wife of many years cooks a mean curry so it’s a case of coals to Newcastle. And now, on a rare curry together we are sitting near Victoria Station surrounded by smoke and decidedly average chicken tikka. But wait, his Chicken Tikka Puri (£4.95) comes quietly to the rescue. No sizzle, no smoke, just tasty meat and fluffy bread to soak the up the sauce.

And so it was all night. For every disappointing dish there was a good one. A Chicken Korai (£6.95) with a less than ‘special sauce’ but a great sweet and spicy King Prawn Dansak (£9.95) with decent enough sized prawns. An Aloo Chana (£3.70) that seemed to forget the aloo bit but a Keema Rice (£3.10) that was piled high with keema and was almost as good as a biryani I comment.

But, oh no, I’ve mentioned the wrong thing. Don’t get my friend started on biryanis. “All that effort and nonsense about the King of Dishes. Not worth it,” he concludes. Just as well I didn’t see a biryani coming out the serving hatch when I arrived really.

New Jomuna, 74 Wilton Road, London, SW1V 1DE. Tel: 020 7828 1401 or 020 7630 0238. E-mail: info@newjomuna.com.

New Jomuna snapshot

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New Jomuna on Urbanspoon

Bhuni Shakarkandi (Roasted Sweet Potato)

On By Daniel FordIn RecipesLeave a comment

Serves 4

What you need
• 4 sweet potatoes
• 1 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon amchoor (dried mango powder)
• 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 red chilli, roughly sliced
• few sprigs coriander, torn
• 2.5-cm/1-inch piece ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

How you cook it
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4. Wrap the sweet potatoes in foil and bake them in the oven for about 35 minutes or until tender. Leave until cool enough to handle, then peel and cut into 2.5-cm/1-inch rounds.
2. Put the sweet potato in a bowl, add the chilli powder, cumin, amchoor and salt and mix well. Squeeze over the lemon juice, then add the chilli, coriander and ginger. Serve warm.

Recipe from Food of the Grand Trunk Road by Anirudh Arora and Hardeep Singh Kohli, courtesy of New Holland Publishing.

 

Smile, you’re in Chutney

On By Daniel FordIn 1. Reviews (London)1 Comment

Chutney, Greenwich

You’ll have to go a long way to find a friendlier Indian restaurant than Chutney. The small, unassuming place (my friend says it always looks shut) is along Greenwich’s Little India strip, one of a few curry places (mostly takeaways) in just a few hundred metres of each other. But every time I’ve visited the greeting is warm and the chit chat over the choice of dishes with the waiter interesting. But this time Chutney surpassed itself by giving us a lift home because ‘the driver is available’. Now that really is service.

Chutney also serves exceptionally good food and has built a reputation for retaining customers who have moved out of the area. The chutney tray, as you’d expect from a restaurant with this name, offers something different: a dry cocunut chutney, made red with colouring and red wine. Tasty indeed, especially with a bit of sweet mango pickle.

Of the main dishes the new Napali Chicken (£6.45) a hottish dish, cooked with onions and green peppers, is to be recommended. But the menu offers so many interesting options: Boal Fish Massala (£6.45) a freshwater fish from Bangladesh, Pistachio Chicken (£5.95) for nut lovers, a Meat Thali (£10.95) with tasters of Chicken Tikka Masala, Chicken Korma, Lamb Bhuna, Tandoori Chicken, Sheek Kebab, rice and nan, and a good range of Chutney’s very own Tapeli set menus such as Tapeli Bengal or Tapeli Joypuri (both £10.95).

It’s not difficult to see that value features highly here, so it is no surprise that Chutney was named runner-up in the category of Best Value in the Greenwich Curry Club Awards. Should you need further persuading, old-school favourites such as Madras and Bhuna come in at £3.95 for vegetable and £4.45 for chicken, which is better than some of the takeaway neighbours.

Chutney, 11 Blackheath Road, London, SE10 8PE. Tel: 020 8692 1924 or 07947 120 989. Open: Sun–Thur 5.30pm–11.30pm, Fri–Sat 5.30pm–midnight.

Chutney snapshot

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Chutneys on Urbanspoon

Recipe… Chicken Phall

On By Daniel FordIn Recipes3 Comments

Phall (.jpg

Chicken Phall
Serves 4

What you need
• 675 g chicken
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 8 cloves garlic finely chopped
• 25 g fresh ginger finely chopped
• 3 tbsp oil
• 400 g tomatoes
• 1 tbsp tomato ketchup
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 12 fresh or dried chillies (or more to your taste)
• salt
• 1 tsp cumin (ground)
• 1 tsp coriander (ground)
• 1 tsp chilli powder
• 1 tsp fenugreek leaves (dried)
• 1 tsp garam masala

How you cook it
1. Chop the meat and fry the onion, garlic and ginger until golden in half the ghee or oil. Mix the spices with a little water to make a paste.
2. Add to the onion mixture, and cook for 10 minutes.
3. Add the tomato (tinned, ketchup and paste) and chillies.
Cook for a further 10 minutes.
4. Meanwhile fry the meat in a separate pan in the remaining ghee or oil, until sealed (5-10 minutes).
5. Combine all ingredients in a casserole dish and cook in a preheated oven at 200 degrees C for 45-60 minutes.

This curry can be left to marinate overnight or it can be frozen.

Recipe courtesy of Sweet ‘n’ Spicy phone app.
Photo: alchetron.com