Paper anniversary............

As it was our wedding anniversary on last Friday and neither of us had arranged anything, we thought we would head up to the local curry house to figure out what we should do with our weekend to celebrate.

Bangla Lounge opened in Harborne just under two years ago replacing what we have been reliably told was a terrible curry house called Café Chilli. It is up a little alley way just next to Mai Thai off the Harborne High Street.

I have to say now that we are frequent visitors to the restaurant, drawn back due to the great food, the cheap prices, and the friendly staff. We walked through the door on a Friday night that was already proving busy and ushered to what we consider to be our regular table. The waiters pull the chairs back for you and then place the napkin on your lap, quite a nice touch for a back street restaurant; I must also point out now that they use linen napkins and linen on the tables which is always a plus sign to me.

We ordered a nice chenin blanc from South Africa at a very reasonable £8.75 (if you’re on a tighter budget the house wine is £7.95 for 752cl or £9.95 for a one litre bottle), and ordered a poppadom each, these come fresh and warm with a selection of mint sauce, onion salad and what tastes like a home-made mango chutney. To start we went for a sharing selection dish of tandoori lamb, chicken and the largest king prawns I’ve ever seen in an Indian Restaurant (although, to call Bangla an Indian restaurant is incorrect the cuisine is Bangladeshi) the starter comes with a side salad and selection of sauces on the plate and at £6.95 you receive a very generous portion. The meats are tender and full of flavour, the lamb chops come pink.

For main courses I chose the Sea bass tawa with extra King prawns, this comes served on a flat style frying pan with a thick rich sweetish sauce, imagine a mix between a pathia and a massala, it was sweet and nicely spiced with just the hint of chilli, the prawns and fish nicely firm and their flavours come through the sauce. Hubby went of a chicken jalfrazi which extra everything, I think it was coriander, tomatoes, onions and probably chillies. He loved it. We shared a lemon and coriander rice, which is fantastically lemony with matches the dishes so well, and the coriander is so refreshing, we also shared a red onion and coriander naan and a batura bread (not on the menu but if you ask they’ll make you anything), we were also given a complimentary side dish of spiced potatoes, tasted like toasted coriander and cumin seeds really gutsy favour.

As it is impossible eat a desert after that much food we decided to have a whiskey each, my step-father is very much into his single malts and recommends a great one that they keep for him, so we set about trying to find it, after hubby had discovered to the bottle we had a generous double each, a great way to finish the meal.

In total for the meal, two bottles of wine and those two double single malts the bill came to £44.50, as well as the complimentary bottle of champagne they gave us to celebrate our anniversary.

In my mind Bangla is the best Indian/curry house in Birmingham.