3:00pm Thursday 18th February 2010
By Gill Harris
GENERALLY the rule with curries is that they come late at night after a few too many beverages and before stumbling home to fall asleep.
So it was a bit of a novelty to turn up at the Curry Garden at 6.30pm and stone cold sober for a bite to eat before the theatre.
We were the first in and, as you’d expect, service was swift and attentive.
We ordered drinks and the obligatory poppadoms, which came with the usual accompaniments.
The menu is extensive, covering all bases from your traditional starters such as kebabs, bhajis and samosa to soups. The array of curries is plentiful, from the milder korma through to the dreaded phall - not for the faint-hearted! The choice of vegetarian dishes is excellent and if you’re not a curry fan, your can have chicken and chips or an omelette.
My theatre buddy Steph chose chicken sali (a slighty dry, spicy curry topped with fried potatoes), with a keema nan and rice, and I decided to try a dish I’d never had before - and plumped for the lamb patia (hot and sour with spicy tomatoes) with a chapati.
Both dishes were excellent and the portions were extremely generous - we could probably have shared one dish between us and not gone hungry.
Steph would have preferred hers to have had a little more oomph - it wasn’t as spicy as she’d hoped - but mine was perfectly balanced with just enough kick to warm you up on a cold winter evening.
And I must say, the meat was excellent - all too often with curries, the meat is dry or tasteless, but my lamb was so tender, it melted in my mouth.
We didn’t have time - or any room left - for dessert so settled our bill, a perfectly reasonable £25.70, which included a diet coke and a gin and tonic.
By the time we left at about 7.30pm, the restaurant was already filling up rapidly - proof that plenty of other people are breaking the curry rule and enjoying a hearty evening meal rather than a late-night nosh up.
Good service, great food and reasonably priced - what’s not to like about Curry Garden?
CURRY GARDEN, 90 Victoria Road, Swindon Tel: 01793 521114. Opening times: Mon to Sat 12pm until 2pm and 5.30pm until midnight; Sundays noon until midnight; open all Bank Holidays. They also do takeaway.
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