Review of the Dulwich Tandoori - June 2010

Where: Dulwich Tandoori, East Dulwich
With whom: The Vole
How much?: £25 for a shared main, four sides / starters and a couple of beers (the obligatory After Eight was complimentary)

East Dulwich's answer to New York's Restaurant Row has a huge amount to offer the marketing consultants, media workers and bankers who throng its pavements daily and nightly. There are some good, if pricey, restaurants and gastropubs (yes the Palmerston, I'm looking at you), an excellent chippy in the Sea Cow and Green and Blue - one of the best neighbourhood winestores I've ever found. As well as those treats, it's home to a number of twee boutiques, a couple of delis and a very good local butcher. All in, an asset to the area. 

For some reason, it's also got a fair number of competing curry houses. After so-so experiences at several of these, I'd all but given up on them, putting the quality down to a lack of authenticity and a surfeit of generically spiced, pre-prepared, fast food served for a predominantly Anglo-Saxon palate. I used to live just off Tooting's curry mile, and so the loss has hit me hard.

I was therefore somewhat dubious as we entered the Dulwich Tandoori, one of the only we haven't tried yet. As it goes, I was pleasantly surprised. It's a real throwback to the 80's mind you, I felt like my father. Dusky red 'ethnic' wallpaper (verging on flock), a Bollywood-lite covers soundtrack of contemporary pop hits, paisley carpets and a small white jug of carnations on every table took us both back. The irritatingly sexist man arguing with his partner on the next table added to that Ashes to Ashes authenticity, though was perhaps less welcome.
  
We had a couple of poppadoms and skipped straight to a combined main course. the menu offers a few surprises. While they have every dish you'd expect from a local curry house, there are a few Bengali specialities that warrant a further look; Shatkora Chicken, named after the sour aromatic citrus fruit of the same name and a fish dish called Rup-Chanda made with the pomfret, a fish I'd certainly never heard of. They also, rarely, had several duck dishes on the menu. 
The chicken Dhansak, a traditionally Gujarati dish, was excellent. Succulent and perfectly cooked chicken served in a spice hot lentil mixture, flavoured with cumin, garlic and chilli. A fresh (if not especially authentic) mushroom pilau and a pleasingly flavoured Aloo Gobi complemented the generously portioned dish, easily enough for the two of us. It was all light, relatively oil free (with the possible exception of the Aloo Gobi) and obviously fresh. Microwave hot towels came on completion, and the modest bill was presented with a brace of After Eights. I'm sure, if we'd had room to contemplate looking, there would have been various frozen ices, served in fruit shells to finish.


I'll be back, the friendly service and interesting menu options will prove too tempting to avoid. It's no Benares certainly, but it's nice to find a good local curry house finally. Seeing what they are capable of with shackled with a menu stuffed with obvious staples I'm also tempted to ask the kitchen to prepare me one of the dishes that they'd prefer to be eating.