It’s slightly hidden away, but this is the very well reviewed Indian Bistro which is located in the cellar of this grand building. The restaurant is known for making an effort to import ingredients from India and apparently reservations are usually needed at weekends.
It’s certainly atmospheric with its bright colours and internal decor choices. I’m not a huge fan of sofas for dining purposes, but the tables have a choice of more traditional seating on one side which I opted for rather than going for some ‘choose your own adventure’ arrangement where I would be sitting too low or high for the table. The venue doesn’t have printed menus (or I didn’t see any), but instead uses a QR code for diners to have a look at the food and drink options.
The server spoke English which was rather helpful for ordering purposes and she was friendly and personable. I had read in advance that there was a scale of spice for each dish that was between one, no spice, and five, lots of spice. I opted to go for five, as I’ve been in this situation many times in Europe and the high spice option doesn’t quite meet my hopes. She did look slightly surprised which was initially something of minor concern to me.
That’s the chicken kadai, one of my go to options at the moment, served alongside cumin rice (jeera) and a chapati. All beautifully presented, it looked appetising and appealing, with the portion size being entirely reasonable.
Back to the spice level, this really was ramped up, which surprised and delighted me. Holding no prisoners in terms of the spice, the sauce was flavourful and interesting, with the chicken being tender. The rice was well cooked and the chapati was slightly nutty and complemented the curry arrangement well.
The beer here is the Bucur Bruna, a dark beer with tastes of caramel, coffee and malt. They had quite a choice of beers, not just the riveting excitement of Cobra and Kingfisher which is the limit of many Indian restaurants in the UK.
All really rather lovely, the prices were low by UK standards (around £12 for everything) and the quality was high. This was really rather good and I have positive memories now of a restaurant that isn’t frightened of using spice in food.