Bengal Fusion @ Lye

Maybe a month ago, Dim and I went to a Bangladeshi fusion restaurant in Lye. Lye is close to Stourbridge, and it took us more than 30 min of bus ride (I guess it takes about 20 min with car).

Food actually was very nice, and I upload the photos.

First, 2 popadoms. They were offered without our ordering and we were not charged. Came with 4 types of accompaniments. They were nice, but not exceptional.



This is Dim's Saatiya Paneer (stir fried paneer in sour sauce). Nice, but a bit too sugary. This must have been an Indo-Chinese (well, Bangla-Chinese?) fusion dish; sweet and sour paneer can be a good description.




These are my Sheek Kebabs. Kebabs were succulent, well-spiced, tasty, but bright-red! Why they wanted to make them so artificially red is beyond me.


From the bottom anti clock-wise, Cheese naan, Shatkora with lamb tikka (“Richly spiced dish infused with Bengal lime”), vegetable rice, and Sabzi Gost Archari (“…rich and spicy herbs and spiced together with chicken, lamb and vegetables”)




The quantity of the lime in the Shatkora dish proved to be too much for Dim. We imagined the dish would have been made with something like Moroccan preserved lemon, but it contained a lot of slices of bitter fruit, which must be different from the citrus I know as lime. It was too strong for him. I liked it as I love lime flavour and it was quite new to me, but I cannot deny that it was too bitter to be really enjoyable. Besides, the meat were shreddeed slightly too large for a morsel and it was a bit dodgy to cut them with knife in unstable kalahi. Otherwise, it was very good and interesting dish. The Archari dish, on the other hand, was really lovely, with generous quantity of meat and vegetable, combined with unusual pickles pieces in the sauce (waiter taught us after the meal that archari means aubergine).

As we were too full for the pudding, we ordered 2 coffees. They came with a small piece of balfi each.



In British curry restaurants, they offer mint chocholates when they bring the bill. Here, they brought this odd tray. I have never seen anything so strange offer before!



We spent £28 including tip. It is a pity that it is not close to our home.