So an awkward 5 min conversation in a pub in Fulham…can I order a child’s portion on the roast dinner please? Staff- no, you are not a child Me- I’m tired, hungover as **** & not that hungry, a child size portion is perfect for me. Staff- I don’t what to do Me- charge me full price & give me a half portion. Staff- I don’t have button for that…
I'm out for a beer and Indian day tomorrow, that's put me in the mood! Actually it's beer and Indian in Leicester, isn't that near you? If so do you know a decent restaurant within a mile or so of the station?
Definitely Paddy Martens Inn. Despite the Irish sounding name it’s a 10/10 Indian. A bit more central I have not tried but heard great things about Chutney Ivy which is very close to the station. Also surrounded by nice bars, Baton Rouge, Exchange Bar, the real ale classroom, the ale wagon. Got social cricket over the road for the full authentic Indian experience too.
Jay Rayner Sharmilee, 71-73 Belgrave Road, Leicester LE4 6AS, (0116 266 8471). Starters £4.25- £5.95, mains £6.95-£12.95, desserts £1.50-£4, beers from £3.95 I can’t describe in detail how the upstairs dining room at Sharmilee in Leicester has changed since last I visited, but that’s not down to senility, not yet at least. After all, 26 years is quite a long time. The impressive young woman managing the restaurant today wasn’t even born when I came the first time. Back then, I wrote that it was decorated in calming shades of sandstone and noted a little decorative ironwork. Now the walls are a White Company shade of cream and there’s a mural of an Indian vista. It’s a comfortable, if functional, space. What matters is the extremely good value vegetarian Indian food, which I loved then and adore now. There’s an enormous, volcano-shaped serving of crisp, crunchy chaat, interlaced with dribbles of tamarind and yoghurt, around a warm, flaky samosa. There’s a dark aubergine curry, with dimpled pools of spiced oil across the surface that coat the mouth, and another of new potatoes, in a thick, lightly sour, tomato-based masala. I mop away at all of this with buttery rags of still-warm dosa, which comes with various chutneys and a small metal pot of restorative vegetable and lentil soup. Finishing it all will be impossible, because today I am alone. A lot will come home with me to my family. Lucky family. please log in to view this image View image in fullscreen ‘I loved vegetarian Indian food then and adore it now’: Kashmiri dum aloo. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Observer Sharmilee was the second restaurant I reviewed when I started writing this column in the spring of 1999 and it’s the only one of the first six that is still trading. The sports café Babe Ruth’s on London’s Finchley Road, the subject of my first review, is long gone and the small children who enjoyed going there for cheesecake may well now have children of their own. For this, my last column for the Observer, I have therefore returned to the very earliest place I could, to be a little reflective and annoyingly wistful. please log in to view this image View image in fullscreen ‘Still warm’: dosa. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/Observer Amusingly, at least to me, that second column began with me recounting how I had been lectured by friends that too many restaurant reviews by the national critics were of shiny new London ventures “where the bill for an evening’s fun can easily match the national debt of a small African country”. You will forgive me, I hope, if I don’t now mount a detailed defence of my last quarter century’s travels. My family knows just how much time I have spent on trains. Certainly reviewing Sharmilee, established by the Gosai family in 1973, felt to me back then like a declaration of intent: that good food can be found anywhere and at almost any price. Downstairs is a counter selling Indian savouries and rainbow-coloured sweets or mithai. Upstairs is the restaurant where, in 1999, starters were £2–£3 and mains rarely broke a fiver. Given that starters are now about a fiver, and mains rarely break £8, I don’t think the bill has quite kept pace with food price inflation. Like Bobby’s across the road, it’s a stalwart of Leicester’s Golden Mile, launched to serve the city’s Asian community, but welcoming to so many others. please log in to view this image View image in fullscreen ‘Crisp and crunchy’: chaat. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Observer It is unneeded proof of what a history of immigration to the UK has gifted us. We may not have the deep culinary culture of France, Italy or Spain. Instead, we’ve long had profound culinary breadth, by being open to the food of elsewhere. I have been lucky enough to travel the world by plate and bowl, from Afghanistan to Myanmar, from Bangladesh to Jamaica and all points in between, just by staying here. Long, intense essays, which are a little light on laughs, have been written about the importance of such restaurants as third spaces for these communities. All of this is doubtless true. I have read some of those essays and nodded sagely at the footnotes. please log in to view this image View image in fullscreen ‘Dimpled pools of spiced oil across the surface’: dark aubergine curry. Photograph: Fabio De Paola But it’s never been a zero-sum game in which the profound virtues of small, cheaper places negate the massive pleasures to be taken in the shinier and the more expensive. I love a quality amuse-bouche, me; something topped with a ludicrous dollop of sparkling fish roe. I love a pre-dessert involving, say, sea buckthorn, and a little advanced praline frottage. I love all the esoteric bits in between. The fact is, I have long been a wet-lipped, weak-kneed, unashamed chef groupie, here for all of it. I may have insisted a little defensively over the years that mine is a writing job, not an eating job. That is true. But to do the writing bit, I have had to hang out in all those restaurants, good and bad, weird and wonderful, cheap and less so. I have been blessed with good fortune and I’ve tried not to take that for granted. Underlying this column has been one grand principle: that there must be space in life for fun because otherwise, what’s the point? For me, fun is going to a restaurant. I really am easily pleased. In the online age, which had not begun when I started, it has become obvious that some people find this whole business of people going to bloody restaurants and spending their bloody money on having a bloody nice time, an absolute outrage. How dare they? They have told me so vituperatively, below the line, via email and across social media. You do you, I suppose. The conversations with those readers with similar appetites to mine have, however, been so much more nourishing. You have shared with me your enthusiasms and recommendations, many of which I have followed. You have educated me, made me think and made me laugh, for which huge thanks. I could have done it without you, but it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as enjoyable. And I am, of course, indebted to the 1,300 or so restaurants I have reviewed, even the shockingly bad ones. You can learn a lot from a lousy night out. please log in to view this image View image in fullscreen ‘Rainbow-coloured’ mithai. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Observer That’s not to make light of how tough things are right now for hospitality, but I have always written from the point of view of the diner. Which is what I am today, here at Sharmilee in Leicester. It really is worth your time. They serve great thalis and on weekdays run a buffet for just £10.95 a head. Do note the £3 charge for anyone who wilfully takes more than they can finish, to guard against food waste. Soon I’ll start writing a new restaurant column elsewhere. For now, though, it’s time for me to lay down my knife and fork and call for the bill. Thank you so much for reading. It’s been an honour. But it’s time for me to go.
No, wrong side of Leicester to me and that road in particular is basically an annex of South Asia they call it the golden mile, most the curry houses down there are said to be top notch even the cheaper more tatty looking ones, which is to be expected really as that area is like the Sikh/hindu city centre. Not that you would have any problems round there, I spent 3 years at a college just off belgrave road and it’s probably the friendliest neighbourhood I’ve ever spent a decent amount of time, they are a lot more accepting and welcoming than we are. If you’re after authentic Indian cuisine you will definitely find it down there, bit of a trek out of the city though.
