Indian at Brick Lane

Dips for the poppadoms

Poppadoms

Starter - Onion bhaji and samosa

Mains

All of the mains

 Before we moved out of our old house we wanted to go to Brick Lane for a curry since it is basically a whole street of Curry Houses. We walked there from our house which is about a half hour walk and was not the best idea because I got blisters on two of my toes and Quentin was tired from biking around.

When we got to Brick Lane we were immediately accosted by a man at the closest restaurant. They all have guys who stand outside and tell you what kind of deals they will give you, they are very aggressive but you do get a good deal, especially if there are two arguing against each other!

I wouldn't have gone into this first place because it didn't look great from the outside but Quentin didn't want to walk anymore so we went in. The guy gave us a deal which included poppadums and dips, mains, rice, naan and two drinks each for 10 pounds each which I think is a pretty sweet deal!

The poppadums and dips came first. In NZ I don't like poppadums at all because they have a weird gross taste, maybe cumin, but over here they are totally yum. The dips that came with them were mango chutney (which I liked but Quentin didn't), diced onions and peppers, a weird red one which tasted like coconut to me but Quentin said it was his favourite even though he hates coconut, and one the guy said was mint sauce but tasted more like raita or tzatziki to us. That was the best one.

Next were the starters. We got onion bhaji and vege samosa because they are the best ones. This is where they let themselves down though. Both the onion bhaji and the samosa were overcooked (the bhaji especially) and full of oil. They had good flavour and would have been enjoyable if it wasn't for the excess of cooking and oil. Also the presentation could have been better! We also both think that onion bhaji is better when it is individual pieces of onion battered and fried, rather than big clumps.

For our mains I ordered aloo gobi (as always) and Quentin ordered vegetable masala (I think) since they don't seem to have malai kofta over here, at least not where we have been. We also got a cheese naan and a garlic naan. The rice here is way better than in NZ because you can pick from all sorts of flavoured rice as well as plain. We got garlic rice and vegetable rice.

The rice we ordered were both really good, even I ate some! And we couldn't quite decide which was best, but maybe the garlic one. The naan was really good as well, it was nice and puffy and crispy, not dense at all but not too crispy so that it all disintegrates! Quentin's main was also delicious, the only problem was with my main. I ordered aloo gobi but I am pretty sure I got aloo saag since there was no cauliflower in my dish but there was spinach. It still had potato so I ate that and it was tasty but there was a major amount of oil in the sauce which was totally off putting.

Now the décor, I think it would be best described as gaudy. They had all sorts of weird stuff going on in there, sort of like they had decorated for a Christmas party and never taken it down! They had shiny streamer type stuff hanging from the light fittings in the roof, streamers on the walls and a big TV playing Indian music videos. I never like to eat at a place playing a TV unless it is part of their thing, like a sports bar or something (although when do I ever go to a sports bar!). Anyway some questionable choices to be sure.

Overall the food was good but there was room for improvement. I would give them 3 out of 5 and would not go back since there are a million other places to get Indian on that street.