A few weeks ago we hosted the 10th Annual Cobra Brick Lane festival at the Vibe bar on Brick Lane. It was a fantastic day with four amazing restaurants all showing off their best dishes. My personal favourite of these was Mango, right in the heart of Brick Lane, so I thought it was about time I headed down and tried out a whole mean for myself.
I headed down to the restaurant with some friends and asked for them to bring us a selection of their house favourites and a couple of Cobra beers. We spent just 20 minutes nibbling on some poppadoms with some cracking chutneys, admiring the stylish restaurant before the below feast appeared. And feast it was! We had to sit on two separate tables! In total we had 9 different dishes consisting of: Bolloywood Blast, Goshte Hara, Simsima (Sea Bass), Mango Delight, Chicken Tikka Mossala, Tarka Dall, Bendi Bajee, Rice, Garlic Chilly Nan, and finally a Pesware Nan….
As you can see it looks terrific. The food was incredible. We asked the waiters which one was their favourite and each one liked something different and for good reason – each of the dishes were totally different, but totally delicious! We went round each one starting at the mildest and working our way up to the hottest and determined that we had three favourites, Bolloywood Blast, Goshte Hara, and Simsima. They were all completely different, the sea bass was creamy and pack full of subtle flavours, the prawns succulent and spicy whist the chicken pack enough heat to keep it interesting but not blow your head off! We loved every mouthful, especially when washed down with an ice cold Cobra beer!!
So if you’re heading to Brick Lane, maybe on a curry safari, then you should certainly make a visit to the fantastic Mango!
Thanks to Shimu for organising such a feast!
Tags: Brick Lane, Chicken Curry, Cobra, curry, London, poppadoms, Recipes, restaurant
Posted in Restaurant review, Restaurants |
So how much do you know about curry? Here are ten facts you can use to impress fellow diners the next time you hit the poppadoms.
1. The first curry recipe in Britain appeared in The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse in 1747. Although simple in its choice of ingredients (using just peppers and coriander seeds) it nevertheless got the nation’s appetite for the spicy stuff up and running.
2. In 1810, the British Bengali entrepreneur Sake Dean Mahomed opened the first Indian curry house in England, it was called the Hindustani Coffee House and was located in London’s Portman Square.
3. Many of the early Indian restaurants in the UK were aimed at ex-pats from the Asian sub-continent. The first Indian restaurant to attract native Londoners was Veeraswamy’s Indian Restaurant in London’s Regent Street which was opened by Edward Palmer in 1927.
4. Over the 1950s the number of curry fans increased dramatically thanks to its use in Coronation Chicken, the dish created to celebrate QE2’s coronation.
5. Until the early 1970s more than three quarters of Indian restaurants in Britain were identified as being owned and run by people of Bengali origin. Currently the dominance of Bangladeshi restaurants is declining in some parts of London and the further north you travel your food is more likely to be made by Punjabis. There are also other smaller ethnic centres such as London’s Stoke Newington, which boasts several Keralan restaurants and the Nepalese and south Indian restaurants around Euston.
6. Chicken Tikka Masala has, up until recently, been said to be the nation’s favourite dish. Apparently it was invented in Glasgow by a Bengali chef, when a customer demanded a sauce with a “too dry” tikka (legend has it that the cook then heated up a tin of Campbell’s condensed tomato soup and added some spices – the Korma has now taken the spot.
7. There are more Indian restaurants in Greater London than in Bombay and New Delhi combined. There are also more English restaurants in Lahore than there are in London (actually that bits not true)
8. UK curry lovers munch nearly four million poppadoms a week. That’s an awful lot of chutney. Apparently the main accompaniment to poppadoms is Mint Chutney (pudina ki chutney) which is completely different from Raita, which is heavier on Cucumbers than mint. Also popular is Lime Pickle, which in my opinion, the eating of which is the culinary equivalent of bungee jumping.
9. Given the huge demand it is no great surprise that there are about 9,500 Indian curry houses in the UK, employing an estimated 70,000 staff.
10. British-style curry restaurants are also popular in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. There is also bizarrely a cluster of Indian restaurants in Santa Monica, Los Angeles which serve the English ex pat community.
Tags: Bengali, Cobra, curry, history, poppadoms
Posted in Curry Facts |
