Attendees - Me, Dawn
None of the usual curry tasters were able to make the trip, leaving me and my better half Dawn to have a football based kid free weekend. She has got right into the footie, becoming an avid Southend fan and was delighted to come to watch the York match and sample the post-match curry, complete with an overnight stay. Yay!
We had set off early Saturday morning and stopped en route at the Ok Diner, a cool looking place on the side of the A1 near Newark but sadly the fayre was not up to a huge amount.The tea was the worst I had ever tasted - barely more than coloured water, certainly no flavour - and my breakfast was only really acceptable. It was off the menu and called the "Yankee Doodle Dandy" except that they had spelt it "Yankie". Hmm. Pancakes were nice, the eggs less so. It was however needed to set us up for the day.
In the evening, we went in search of a curry house and found The Raj just along the road from where we were staying, the restaurant was in the Bootham area of the City - not the best but still quite pleasant - and was about 250 yards from our hotel. According to the signs in the window it was "award winning" and certainly looked very clean, spotless in fact and with a quite modern feel. I liked it, Dawn not so. Just goes to show!
What was quite nice was that for once the curry didn't have to be rushed so that we could make the kick off. Therefore we arrived at around 7:30 and went into the lobby area (also the take-away collection area), asking for a table for 2. We were simply invited to take a seat so an answer to that question was completely avoided, but after a few minutes we were shown into the restaurant and to our table, which looked like the last one available!
We ordered some water and a bottle of wine, plus the obligatory poppodums, 2 plain, 2 spicy. They came up with the usual selection of pickles which were disappointing, straight out of a jar. I think that you can tell quite a lot about a curry house from it's pickle selection and if they can't be bothered to make their own then that's a warning sign.
However, everything else was A-ok and we waited for our main course. I had opted for the Akhini Chicken - a mild and fruity curry with pineapple, almonds, sultanas, tomato and cherry, garnished with rice and served with a "special" curry sauce - whilst Dawn opted for the seafood special. Side orders were a Peshwari Naan, Roti bread, a Sag Paneer and a Dall Masala.
Again, everything was ok, but not really much more than that. Dawn's seafood was very good and there isn't a lot wrong you can do with a Dall and Peshwari Nan (again, commercial rather than home made) nut the Sag Paneer was runny like a sauce and whilst the flavours were good, it struggled to get to the height of what might have been expected of an award winning restaurant. Perhaps that was the issue - it bigged itself up a lot and looked so lovely that the food expectations were extremely high.
Service wise it was ok considering it was busy although the waiters didn't seem over friendly but we were offered a complimentary drink afterwards. Price wise it was much more than I would have paid for a pre-match curry, plus we had wine as well (but no other drinks aside from 2 small bottles of Harrogate spring water) and most of the dishes were vegetarian. I thought £55 was on the high side.
Marks
Exterior - 9
Surroundings - 8
Interior - 8
Toilets - 7
Service - 6
Quality - 6
Value - 5
Overall - 7
The football
Southend made it a 3rd win in a week with a terrific 3-2 victory against a York side that had only lost their first game in 23 last week. Fantastic 2nd half performance and we were well worth the victory. The ground at York is quaint and old fashioned with a good "feel" for the real football fan. All in all a great weekend.
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