Curry - The Most Wonderful Food in the World!
It is not often that you can visit a restaurant, and the very next day, fancy going to the same type of restaurant again, but I find that eating curry only reminds me of how much I love it, and makes me want to eat even more curry. I have often heard that you should never trust someone that doesn't drink, as it probably means that there is a sinister part of their personality that they are trying to keep under wraps by not getting drunk. While curry does not have the same Jeckyll and Hyde effect on a person, I would feel the same distrust of someone who said they don't like curry. I met a person that didn't like curry, and he was indeed a bad egg.
On Thursday, I was lucky enough to visit The Bombay Bicycle Club, a rather fancy Indian eatery in London's Holland Park. Here, I was treated to an unusual creamy dish, Murgh Multan, featuring smoked chicken. I have never eaten smoked chicken in a curry before, but the combination of its deep, woody flavour with the tomato infused creamy sauce was really something quite special. Accompanying this, I sampled Shahi Bagyan, a spiced roasted Aubergine dish. The onions and garlic in this dish soaked into the porous aubergine to create almost meaty chunks of curry heaven and provided a tasty contrast to the creamy chicken dish.
Contrary to The Bombay Bicycle Club's offerings, I am often surprised in Indian restaurants that not a lot of interesting vegetarian dishes are available, especially when you consider that in India 31% of the population are vegetarians, compared with only around 5% in the UK. Shahi Bagyan is a shining example of why more restaurants then should offer a wider selection of vegetarian Indian food, as Indians (or at least the chefs of The Bombay Bicycle Club!) really do excel in meat free cuisine. For particularly authentic Indian vegetarian food, Dosa Chennai is definitely worth a visit. Humble as the surroundings, may be (an almost greasy spoon style environment in East Ham), it is probably the only restaurant in London where you can get food served on a banana leaf, as is customary in the South of India. At around £4 for a vegetarian Thali platter, which includes a selection of vegetable dishes, rice and chapati, it's a bargain too!
My partner in crime La Rue had been in San Francisco for the past two weeks, where the yanks, with their penchant for everything deep fried and sugary, have failed to embrace India's finest in the way us Brits have, so when she returned on Saturday, she was unsurprisingly craving a vegetable Korma. Despite my feast on Thursday, I was in no way opposed to accompanying her to Shepherds Bush's finest, Rajput, on Saturday night. While The Bombay Bicycle Club is a fine Indian restaurant, it is so good, that its prices reflect it, and it therefore best reserved for special occasions. The Rajput, on Goldhawk Road has everything you could ever want from an Indian Restaurant: amazing food, friendly local feel, and super cheap prices. Until last night, every time I visited, I had ordered the Haryali Chicken, a dish with a sauce of coriander and mint, because it is one of those dishes that is so good, you are scared to order anything else in case it doesn't live up to it. But last night I branched out and ordered the Achari Chicken Tikka Massala. This dish is made up of pieces of barbequed chicken in a sweet, spiced tomato based sauce. The sweet tomato perfectly complimented the smoky barbequed chicken and left me feeling wonderfully satisfied and full of curry!
A man once commented that during a 30 night stay in Shepherds Bush, he ate a Rajput meal for 27 of these. This my friends is my ultimate dream!
