Masaledar - India meets Clockwork Orange.

Hello curry people,

We ventured across to Masaledar last Friday to sample their wares and check out the fit waitress. See link.

http://www.london-eating.co.uk/3005.htm

This contained some of the funniest reviews ever written. It seems this place would either blow us away or be a total disaster. Deep down I was hoping it would be a disaster. I'm still awaiting a car crash evening spent spooning mounds of veggy glop into my rubber naan. Why I don't know. Maybe being English means I secretly yearn for misery. Maybe I'm just a fool.

Present were:

Berry7
Spice Jet Farmer
Big Dunc
Desmond

Plus Guests...

Farmer's surprisingly nice and non ape-like missus Lauren.
Richard
Chloe
Ben (a bad drunk it seems)
Elle
Vicky

Anyhow, we stumbled into Masaledar after a couple at the Selkirk and waited around like idiots for about 2 minutes before anyone could be bothered to acknowledge us. It was so ridiculous that the chef looked embarrassed and went off to find someone for us. It's not hard to smile and tell people to give you two minutes is it? Apparently it is.

So they moved us out back into the most bizarrely decorated curry house EVER and then we took our seats. The decor looked like a mix between chic interior design and a mentalist on acid. The chairs were wrought iron and bright red and the walls a strange brown with minimalist pictures hanging on them. Odd but fair play for effort. I quite liked it. It beats your average curry house in Tooting, hands down.

The service remained terrible, although always polite and helpful when it came and after much looking around and wondering what was happening, we got our starters. But before our poppadoms. Seriously. How on earth? By this point we were all clutching our heads. The starters were quite good with the kebab being pretty tasty although the description of "canteen burger with amazing spices" did kind of sum it up. The spring roll was enjoyable with spinach and paneer but spring roll? Why exactly? The onion bhajis were average at best and the yoghurt was fizzy! Don't ask but it was fizzy!

Then the mains came, after another elongated wait, which was fine as we topped up on Cobra, and jabbered incessantly about the TCC with our guests, who seemed to be enjoying the concept. I stopped taking notes at this point because I was a bit pissed and it wasn't really worth it. I was already writing the place off. Then, in a bizarre turnaround involving Lazarus and a sprinkle of cumin, the kitchen provided some quite excellent main courses. I didn't write them down because I was too busy eating but I went with the fish masala, a chicken jalfrezi, chicken methi and other usuals were ordered plus a variety of lamb and vegetarian dishes. The mains were really pretty good and we all tucked into each other's dishes with glee. The night finally took off and people were doing the vital part of a curry night which is saying "ooh you must try this lamb" or "have you tasted the fish?" and everyone mucking in. At last Masaledar came to life. But was it too late?

So onto the scores.

The place - 7 out of 10. I liked it. We all did. They'd put loads of effort in to make this somewhere different from the plethora of canteens down the high street. The seats were big and comfortable and the decor was chilled. There was a distinct lack of atmosphere though and it did feel a bit like you were just stuck out the back where we were. But it was a nice change.

The Service - 3 out of 10. Good. God. They were friendly and helpful and so on but really. The service was so bad that I managed to make a 3 skin joint at the table with hash and no one even came close to noticing. It took me about 5 drunken minutes to do. They would be gone for ages before even popping their heads back in and even then it was hard to get their attention. Poppadoms after starters was quite inspired. Even the waiter looked shocked at that one.

Starters and Sundries - 6 out of 10. Some were pretty good, others a bit bland. The food in fairness pulled this place up because the starters did get everyone chatting about the food and its relative qualities whereas before were just laughing at the service. Not bad at all.

Curry - 7 out of 10. The mains were tasty and deserve some credit. We had a range of dishes and each one (apart from the kidney bean curry which seemed like a good idea at the time) had a good amount of flavour and spice. I did really enjoy the mains but people felt after an 8.5 for Lahore that this only warranted a 7. Good, strong curry though.

Value for Money - 5 out of 10. Some said 6 but overall the "locals" said 5. The bill came to £12 each with tip which is a fair increase on last week for not as much value. I think you are paying a bit for the decor here, which is fair enough. You would want to take my sister here and not Lahore and pay more to shut her up. Personally I'd rather pay less and have the better curry and try and shut out her nagging tones as I eat my chicken tikka starter.

Total - 28 out of 50. Thinks it's all been covered. It just let itself down when it could have easily scored well. The decor is there and with a bit of attention and hospitality then the place would do well. They need to dedicate people to the back area and not leave them out to dry and just up the effort a bit. The starters could be a bit more inventive and the poppadoms come with some chutney and so on rather than just fizzing yoghurt. A few simple touches would really pick this place up. It does have the nicest surroundings I've seen, if you're bothered by that sort of thing so it may well do well on that alone.

The Happy Meal came out more expensive than Lahore.

Tarka Dall - £4.25
Plain Rice - £2.25
Plain Naan - 90p
Sweet Lassi - £1.95.

Total - £9.35.

Pretty steep really.

Lahore sits untouched after one week then. Rightly so. Not sure about a venue this week. Might go on Monday night to somewhere quite canteen like and test the water of some of the smaller, lesser known venues. Friday was a good night and our guests enjoyed themselves but I think there are better to be found venues in our quest. I made it to bed around 3am this time I think after Bad Drunk Ben removed himself from my front room. I suspect it may not be the last I see of him on these nights.

In other news our business cards are on their way! Excellent.

Berry7.

Lahore. Not a French Prostitute.

Expectations were high for the first meeting. We congregated in The Selkirk and sank a couple of ciders to get everyone in the mood. Everyone laughed at the nature of the e mails discussing the relevant criteria from the previous week but a few people averted their eyes when anyone mentioned we had gone over the top. They clearly felt we hadn't gone far enough! Those present were...

Berry7.
Spice Jet Farmer.
King Herrod.
Desmond.
Paulo.
Matt the Daytime Drunk.
Matt the Negative Ozzie
His hot, drug smoking bird Cris. (He isn't allowed back without her)

Big Dunc was missing which was a shame, given his excessive arguing of any point available last week but Daniel "Spice Jet" Farmer was there, having admitted late last week that "he was getting into it now." For a man of such general negativity this was akin to a veritable proclamation of love. Unfortunately we had an Ozzie guy with us who kept saying that Thai curries were better and rambling on about beetroot. Luckily his good lady friend was hot and skinned up on demand. Rough with the smooth and all that.

So, we arrived at Lahore and were promptly dealt with by the helpful waiter. It seemed downstairs was full and so we were eventually ushered upstairs. Not sure how to describe the decor. Words like canteen, your nan's flat, a dive spring to mind. It was very basic with paint peeling away everywhere and partitions that looked like we were in a dodgy Eastern European mental ward. In the midst of all this though stands a nice spiral staircase. Go figure.

So it was a bit "low key" in that sense but it was clean. And this, to me, is the main thing. Poppadoms were not forthcoming until asked for and we all agreed it is nice to be offered them straight off the bounce. Especially in a busy place where it can be hard to attract anyone's attention. These were good and the condiments with them very tasty. A good solid start. The waiter took our orders as we cracked into our BYO Cobras, yet despite being helpful, he never really set the world on fire with his banter. I don't expect a rendition of Russ Abbott gags or anything but a bit of chat and a smile is always nice.

Short of sitting there with a pen and paper all meal (which I did for enough of it!) I won't ever write down every starter and main. But memory tells me we had onion bhaji (average), paneer pakora (good but a bit bland), kebab (excellent) and chicken tikka (fan-bloody-tastic). Which gets a special mention as being the best chicken tikka I have ever had. It was exquisite. Really. So the starters went down pretty well with the kebab and tikka being lauded by all.

Onto the mains and this is where Lahore came steamrolling into the fray like a maniac searching for a lassi after a phall. Chicken Jalfrezi will be a mainstay of the TCC and so we ordered two. I wrote these ones down as well: karahi kebab, fish masala karahi and zera chicken karahi. Think we had a chicken methi as well and a lamb with mango (?). The normal rice and naans accompanied it. Good Lord, it was fucking good! Sorry for the swearing but it's warranted. People tossed dishes around like kids at a pass the parcel party, each claiming the last one was the best. It was exceptional. We can heartily recommend the fish and the kebab dishes both which has such amazing flavours and tender meat. The lamb was also immense. Combined with good breads and rice, the main course was fantastic.

The dessert menu was looked at but we all agreed that the pudding hatch was firmly shut by the food and Cobra. So onto the marks.

The place - 5 out of 10. It's a bit of a dive. Sorry but it is. For a group of us having a curry it's ok but even then it's not exactly the right side of painted. It was clean but that is pretty much all you could say for it. Probably an extra mark for the mental staircase. Genius.

The Service - 7 out of 10. Seen to quickly and treated nicely, the staff seemed to have the bare minimum to keep you happy. They would answer questions and so on but it was hard to get their attention and the banter/chat/general cordiality was not exactly flowing. But it was good in the sense that orders were delivered correctly and promptly. Extra mark for the crowd's drunken rendition of happy Birthday to a random bald man.

Starters and Sundries - 8.5 out of 10. The decimal came in because of drunken arguments about the quality. I think a 9 would have been acceptable but some dishes were a little bit bland. Overall though it is a harsh judge who thinks this place only gets an 8 for this area, in my opinion. 8.5 seemed fair.

Curry - Another 8.5 out of 10. Again it could have been a 9. The mains were quite amazing. The chicken was a little dry in a couple of the dishes but the meat was normally well cooked and the flavours astonishing at times. Really very impressive. I can see this getting revised to a 9 in the future. It was put in as provisional due to drunken disagreements.

Value for Money - 9 out of 10. Ten off us ate poppadoms, starters and mains and we ploughed though a lot. No one left hungry. The total bill came to under £72. So £8 in, with a tip. Now value for money is a subjective thing so you may think this not cheap if you normally spend £3 on a meal but we were all stunned. On top of this it is BYOB but that is just a side note!

Total - 38 out of 50. This seemed low given the quality of the curry and spawned a large amount of drunken debate. Think we all agreed that the criteria could be broken down to cover the food side of things if people didn't care about service or decor. This would give Lahore 26 out of 30 on the actually curry side of things. The TCC wanted a provisional score put next to all these marks in case we wanted to change them in time. I think people wondered if the curry marks should have been 9s.

We decided on a set menu and we will check the cost in each curry house to give people an idea of expense. It's the TCC equivalent of a Happy Meal or something.

Tarka Dall - £2.75
Plain Rice - £1.95
Plain Nann - 60p
Sweet Lassi - £1.40.

Total - £6.70.

Overall, I thought the place was great. I'd take good curry and canteen like surroundings over average curry and leather couches. So the main ingredients are there. You can't help thinking, when sat upstairs though, that a small paint job and some new furniture would really perk it up. But maybe that's the charm. One thing to be agreed on is the curry is ace and very well priced. Heartily recommended by all.

TCC celebrated it's inaugural night with hardcore drinking until bed was found at 4.30am. I didn't even get a kebab on the way home so I must have been full. Good work Lahore!

So Lahore sits top right now. For obvious reasons. Will it get knocked off? Unknown. Someone may pip it through better decor but for curry reasons alone, it will be hard to beat. Tune in soon for this week's venue. I will let you know as soon as we have a location to visit!

Winners.

Berry7.

A New Ear.

My title was meant to start as "A New Era" but I mistyped it and then decided I quite liked the mistake. Anyway...

Over a variety of banal and strange e mail arguments, spanning the past two days, we have finally "agreed" on a set of criteria for the TCC's evaluation of a curry house. You'd think it would be easy. You'd think that you'd all sit down and go "Right, food. That's the important bit...food and atmosphere and a reasonable price". Then you might all nod your heads in cyber space and that would be that.

If only. No wonder the Middle East question still rages when a few friendly people can disagree, quite so impressively, on what makes a good curry house.

The e mail thread entitled "So it begins" spanned over 50 e mails and included a myriad of insane discussions about the relative merits of a curry house's complimentary poppadoms or the possible ghee content of a side dish. Who would have thought this could be so complex? The highlight for me was this gem on whether a curry house should be penalised for allowing you to bring your own booze in or not. Some thought BYOB was a bonus, some said it placed too much emphasis on the alcohol, some said it could punish certain religions!

This was an actual response in our e mail arguments about whether BYOB should improve a curry house's score on value for money. Please bear in mind that we are all pretty simple and just want to eat curry and drink some booze.

"Ah, but if you're using this on the price scale, then the overall value for money will be effected. It gives an unfair advantage to BYOB on this scale. We will need to take this in to consideration when working on the price ratings. Maybe some kind of factorisation to the bill to standardise the price depended in licensed status."

I still don't think this makes any sense or contains any worthy points but it impressed me nonetheless. The argument raged until one member was reduced to recounting memories of a dark episode in Goa airport. Stood by the baggage carousel, having disembarked off the aptly named Spice Jet from Mumbai, he was caught unawares by the death rattle of the previous day's curry. Dark times. Should any after effect be included in the scale? This could go on forever...

We settled on this. When I say settled, I mean the argument briefly stopped and I am praying that's because we agreed. These are the categories we decided on. You may not concur. You may laugh heartily and scream "BUFFOONS!" at your monitor but I don't care. I am weakened. I just want to start eating spiced meat.

Big Dunc, a vibrant spokesperson in this whole farce, waded in with this e mail when I was on the edge of sanity. I think this captures the concepts we discussed pretty well.

A number of these can indeed be combined into an overall category. I think it's worth discussing each point when coming to an overall score for something.
My vote would therefore be for:

Decor, Cleanliness and Clientele (includes ambience, music, general "buzz" of the place, and any potential celeb customers, amount of cockroaches, etc) - score out of 10

Value for Money (portion sizes, plus use the set dish idea, but also also taking into account overall quality and experience: is it worth the price?) - score out of 10

Service (Staff friendliness, banter, knowledge of dishes, speed of delivery, did they get the order right, did they try and add anything to the bill, did they clone your credit card afterwards?) - score out of 10

Curry (Variety of dishes, spices, Ghee effect, etc) - score out of 10

Other dishes (Starters, side dishes, sundries and drinks) - score out of 10

Overall score out of 50.

Additional points for formal review afterwards include proximity of nearest boozer for after curry drinking session, and any post curry effects.

Yes this may not cover it all. Perhaps you may disagree and all opinions are considered if you do (the TCC is dynamic and organic - it will adapt) but for now I'm going with this. One, because I'm worn out by the madness of curry ratings and, more importantly - two, because we're going to Lahore tonight. The restaurant not the place. It's a bit of a scam to start with one of the better renowned places but it's just how it worked out.

We're meeting in the Selkirk for booze and to argue again, no doubt, and then we're gonna stroll over. No doubt it'll be full and we'll end up eating a kebab in a side alley but whatever happens the last two days has been interesting.

The TCC is ready to roll. We hope to include a set menu and check the price of it in each eatery so I will put that down on my review as well. Will this work? Will we achieve anything? Will anyone make it to the curry house or will we get leathered and end up brawling down Garratt's Terrace, using wheelie bins as weapons?

Unknown. Tune in to find out, I guess.

In the words of Louis Mountbatten to Mahatma Gandhi: "I just think a jalfrezi tastes better with a beer than, say, an orange juice! And what the fuck is a lassi?"

Wish us luck.

Berry7.

Tooting Curry Club

The first rule of Tooting Curry Club is you need to like curry.
The second rule of Tooting Curry Club is it helps if you live in Tooting.

That's about it. The aim is simple. Having sampled the delights of Mirch Masala, a few of us noted the veritable smorgasbord of curry houses in the Tooting area. Why not try and do them all, we mused. Perhaps we would uncover some gems hidden in the back streets. If nothing else it would give us a chance to meet up regularly and eat curry! Surely a beautiful combination. I moved in last Sunday, the 12th of August, and we need to start quickly if we are to break the back of the many places on offer

So prepare for our first entry this weekend. We will be hitting Lahore which is by all accounts a gem of a venue and a recent receiver of awards. Looking like a shabby canteen, we cannot wait to test out its delights.

Watch out for the review that follows and a probable announcement of our manifesto. We will need to come up with scales to rate each restaurant/cafe/shack and to work out how best to categorise their many good and bad offerings. One might have amazing atmosphere but average food, or great service but terrible beer. We will try and cover all the angles.

See you next week.

Berry7.