Dinner for 1 with beer: £35.00

I must start off for apologizing for the blurry photos in this post.  There were extenuating circumstance – 1.) we were seated in a freakin’ corridor with no lighting and 2.) there was a significant amount of alcohol involved in the evening so I was perhaps less than my usual careful self whence snapping the snaps.

The evening started out with me having fainted in a doctor’s office from the pain of an injection in my foot and the doctor ordering me to go straight home to rest.  Genius that I am I went instead to a pub in Mayfair to meet up with some friends for drinks.

We began our night with several rounds at the Fitzroy Tavern on Charlotte St.  The Fitzroy is a Sammy Smith’s pub so the beer is good and inexpensive.  After an hour or two we were all feeling rather jolly and decided to head en masse up the road to Rasa Samudra.

The 5 of us arrived at about 9pm on a Wednesday without a booking and got a very friendly reception.  We were very happy to not have to wait for a table – until we had to climb over other diners to get to it because it was crammed into the end of what is really a hallway.  To make matters worse next to the table are stacks of cardboard boxes filled with god only knows what covered with table cloths.  But the restaurant was really busy and it wasn’t the worst thing in the world so we didn’t make a fuss and took our seats.

At this point in the evening, several pints in, post fainting, etc. I am in no mood to be making any kind of decisions, nor apparently is Tim who is the only other non-vegetarian with us.  Luckily they offer a set meal called the seafood feast.  I tell our waiter how much I like prawns hoping to influence the dishes we get and sit back to wait for the onslaught of food.

Snacks!

The first part of the feast to arrive are the “pre-meal snacks” a selection of achappam (a crazy flower shaped poppadom) and a bunch of other types of poppadom and fried lentil flour yummy crunchy things.  They were all good but the real star was the selection of chutneys and pickles that accompanied them.  The lemon pickle was just tremendous.  We were served two seafood pickles too which were fantastic with the snacks.  I’ve never had fish based pickles before but they really work.   The whole basket and all of the chutneys disappeared from the table approximately 14 seconds after it arrived (I was with 4 guys).

Seafood Starters

Next up was a plate of 3 different seafood starters.  There was a crab and coconut fritter and a spicy prawn.  Both of these were delicious but the shellfish soup was just out of site.  I could have eaten a big bowl of it and nothing else for dinner and would have been happy.

Main dishes

For the main dishes we had 2 different prawn curries and one king fish curry.  The waiter had apparently listened when I said I liked prawns.  They were all delicious.  Freshly prepared curries are wonderful when you can taste all of the herbs and spices as you could with these.  I have no idea which ones they are on the menu (I had long since stopped taking notes at this point) but if I could figure out what they were I would totally order them again.

The vegetarians reported enjoying their vegetarian feast as much as we had enjoyed our seafood one.  Deserts were included but I let the boys eat them as I could barely breathe at this point.

The food was great and the service was attentive.  I will definitely be going back – next time I will make sure I have a better located table.  And I will have a bigger bowl of that amazing seafood soup.

Rasa Samudra
5 Charlotte Street
London W1T 1RE

Dinner for 1 with several beers: £30.00

The most recent outing of the Curry Club occurred a few weeks ago on a Wednesday..always a good night to go out on a bender.  This time we headed out to Urban Kahari in glamorous Hanwell.

A kahari is a specific type of pot for cooking in which I had never heard of so I was excited to try something new.  I was also promised some serious hot and spicy.

The interior of the restaurant is perplexing.  Its looks like what people in the 80s imagined the future would look like.  Lots of shiny black surfaces, colored lights and water features all over the place.  Its tacky as hell, but in a fun rather than off putting way.  My favorite aspect of the decor was the ladies toilet which was right out of the movie Tron – awesome.

We started out by sharing an order of the Atomic Wings.

Stunt Wings

I am pretty cavalier about my chili consumption, believing that virtually no foods are too spicy for me to eat.  I didn’t give a second thought to taking a big bite out of one.

Have you ever seen that episode of the Simpsons where Homer eats the Guatemalan insanity pepper that is so hot that he winds up having hallucinations and goes on a spirit journey with a fox?  These wings were that freakin hot and I sat waiting for my own spirit guide for a few moments expecting to wake up in the hospital.  I am pretty sure I chugged an entire large beer in an attempt to extinguish the pain but my memory is a little fuzzy for the 10 minute period between when I first ate the wing and when I recovered the use of my facial muscles.

In the midst of the screaming and the downing of cold drinks I turned to my left to see my friend Tim finishing off all of the wings – even dipping them repeatedly in the sauce to get as much chili as possible.  Maniac.  The rest of us were sweating and crying and here he was popping them in his mouth like grapes.  He said he didn’t think they were that hot!  The man is a chili eating machine.

These wings are stunt food.  I wouldn’t recommend ordering them if you don’t really really love the hot stuff.

Starters

The other starters were all much more reasonable.  Mongolian paneer had a good dose of heat and the cheese was fresh.  My chili mogo (cassava) a dish of Kenyan/Indian origin was seasoned nicely but the cassava itself was really dry and required a bit too much chewing.

Prawn Karahi

For the main I ordered prawns prepared in the Karahi.  This dish was a winner with fresh ginger and chili all over the place.  It was hot – but flavorful hot.  On the side we had garlic mushrooms, okra and saag (spinach) – all of which were quite good.

I was far too stuffed to entertain dessert but when I saw Lee staring down at his ice cream with a confused and slightly embarrassed look I investigated.  You have to wonder if it was tongue in cheek or completely accidental – either way completely hilarious.

Tee hee!

The food was good, the service was excellent, the ice cream was silly.  A great time was had by all.  If I ever find myself in West Ealing looking for a meal I would go again on my own or with a group but I would not make a special trip out on my own from the center of London for it.

Urban Karahi
47 Greenford Road
Hanwell, W7 1LP

Lunch for 3 with fancy fruity cocktails: approx £ 90.00

Spent a recent Sunday with Caroline and Martin visiting the Royal Academy of Arts to see an exhibit of the Japanese print maker Kuniyoshi.  The exhibit is closed now but I recommend checking his work out if you ever have the chance.

The exhibit was a feast of Samurai warriors in battle with fanciful dragons, women in flowing kimonos and other mythical Japanese images.  So naturally I had an unreal craving for Indian food.

I found Veeraswamy on my blackberry and the idea of eating in the oldest Indian restaurant in London sounded kind of neat.   I pictured an old fashioned, pickled interior and I was looking forward to it.

The entry way is a tiny corridor with an elevator, all black and shiny.  The restaurant is on the second floor and its all modern, flashy and again shiny.  Not quite what I expected.  Its all a bit much really – I think there are 700 little colored glass lamp thingies hanging from the ceiling and there are rose petals everywhere.  I am sure this place is ridiculously expensive in the evening but for Sunday lunch there is a £22.00 3 course set meal.

We ordered some of their specialty cocktails and as these things tend to go, Martin -  a bloke – wound up with the girliest, silliest cocktail of the three.  Delicious yes – but doing nothing for his macho credibility.

Martin's silly cocktail

I chose the Bhel puri for my starter.  A puri filled with all sorts of goodies – pomegranate seeds, diced potato, chickpeas, sev, onions and delicious fresh cilantro chutney.  The presentation was seriously fussy but it was sooooo goooood.

Bhel Puri

Martin had better luck with his starter than his cocktail in the frilliness department.  He opted for a different puri.  It was light and slightly crispy. The chickpeas on the side for dipping were great.

Puri with chickpeas

For our mains we ordered the Malai Kofta and Paneer with morel mushrooms in a tomato sauce.  I’ve never seen morels on an Indian menu.  They worked well in the spicy tomato sauce.  The malai kofta was excellent.

Our mains over tea lights

The food was great but everything else about the experience was a little overwrought.  For example our mains were placed over tea lights.  I am not sure if I was supposed to believe that a teeny tiny little candle was keeping my food hot.  Also if it could be served on a abstractly shaped piece of banana leaf – it was. There were just too many embellishments – everywhere – it threatened to overwhelm the food.

Martin thought that the food was very old fashioned but I think the food was rather nouveau but that the atmosphere was retro – not the kind of retro that the oldest restaurant in London has the right to be – 1990′ s retro.  I would not have been at all surprised if my mango sorbet had been served with some kind of silly spun sugar antennae sticking out of it (thankfully it was not).

Overall I enjoyed the meal very much but the dining experience was over the top.  I would certainly go here for a special occasion when that was called for, but not for a quiet meal on my own and there are plenty of mellower and less expensive Indian restaurants in London I would want to try before I make it back here.

Veeraswamy
99 Regent Street
London W1B 4RS

Meal for 1:  £15.00 for a ludicrous amount of food and wine

Curry Club was born out of a desire by some friends from my office in London to beat me with chili – to find food that was too hot even for me to enjoy.   Really it is just a good excuse to go out for excellent food.

Our most recent outing was to Saravnna Bhavan a South Indian restaurant in Harrow, London.  9 of us made the trek down on a Wednesday night right after work to find the place packed to the rafters.  Even though we had reserved we had to wait a few minutes for our table.  While waiting a steady stream of diners arrived  to swell the place seemingly to capacity.

I started with a dish recommended to me by Rathna who’s favorite thing are idly – little lentil flour doughnuts (not the fried kind) swimming in a buttery light lentil sambar.  They were so good I seriously considered refusing to share a single one of the 14 with any of my friends.

Mini Idly Ghee Sambar

Next up was a chili, tomato and onion uthappam a fluffly crepe served with a nice trio of sambals and sambar.  Yum Yum YUM!  One of my friends ordered the chili paneer which was definitely one of the winners of the evening.

Uthappam

And because the stated aim of curry club is to kill me with the chili I had to order the Deviled Potatoes.  Rather than just being a flash of heat this dish had a complex and lovely smokey heat that I really enjoyed.   I was stuffed to the gills at this point but it was so good I just had to keep eating.  In the front of the restaurant is a case of different sweets which I can also recommend – if you can possibly eat any more after your meal.

Deviled Potatoes

We all overate to the point of needing to lie down on the tube on the way home just to be able to breathe.

This is by far the best Indian meal I have had in London to date.  It is really far out of the way (at least 45 mins by tube to anywhere in central London) and it is probably a place I would bring at least one friend along rather than going by myself.   This is a fun place for a group.  I will definitely be going back.

Saravanna Bhavan
403 Alexandra Avenue
Rayners Lane, Harrow HA2 9SG