English Dhaba

Rating: 2

We ate dinner here in May 2023.

Malai kofta with rice and plain naan
Bombay aloo with rice and cheese & garlic naan

The decor in this place was 🔥. Literally. As in, the place had been on fire. There were smoke stains up the walls and soot all over the ceiling. Perhaps this was why they left the door open sweeping in icy night air for the entire meal. They didn’t really seem to give any consideration to the idea that people might like to dine in. To be fair, take away is clearly their bread and butter and they were doing a very steady trade.

Strangely, they didn’t ask us how hot we wanted our curries. Instead they just bought us whatever, which was one mild and one medium. The malai kofta (mild) was insanely sweet. Even the koftas themselves were sweet, but had a heck of a texture, so bouncy and soft. Those sweet koftas in a less sugary sauce could have been a great dish. The Bombay aloo came out medium. It also came out boiled, despite the menu explicitly stating the potatoes would be deep fried. It was otherwise okay.

The naans were pretty good. They were both soft and bready, not too much cheese with the garlic, and a nice sprinkling of herbs and some oil on the plain. Watch out when it’s time to pay though - we were accidentally (or intentionally?) overcharged by like 40%. Worse still, we didn’t realise until we were half way home and too lazy to turn around.