December Balti Triangle Walk 3

Happy New Year!


I know it is late, but I returned from holidays on 7th. So I pretend it is OK. :p


Although it is already January, I continue the entries of 'Balti Triangle Walk' of December.

Adil, one of the oldest establishments in Balti Triangle, is open in Ladypool Road, while the premises in Stoney Lane is in refurbishment. It is a good idea to refurbish, as it looked really shabby standing next to the shiny Al Faisal.

I noticed a new fast food shop called Thrill Grill. I don't remember what was here before.

In Balti Triangle, there is a tendency that the old style balti houses get closed down and this type of fast food shop style kebab houses (which usually offers also balti) keep on popping up.


And I found also this newly opened Dipyum Cake shop.



It sells egg free cakes.

But, if you do not not egg alergy (I don't think it is particularly common), why do you want egg free cake? I saw another egg-free cake shop in Cape Hill. I guess there is some religious significance which, however, escapes me.

December Balti Triangle Walk 2

Apart from the restaurants, another thing that I look forward to seeing in Balti Triangle are fresh and/or exotic vegetables.

Here are some examples.

Turia.

Evidently it is a kind of gourd.

These green leaves are over-grown rocket.

I bought these. The leaves can be eaten as salad and the stalks in stir-fry. Yum yum. And only 60p a bunch.

Red mooli (radish).

I don't know how they taste like.

And these. Look like chesnuts, but these are 'Sangara' according to the name plate.

I heard that they taste like water-chesnuts. To be boiled to eat.



Although these were very interesting, I did not buy them, as they did not look fresh enough.


Balti Triangle walk continues...

December Balti Triangle Walk 1

Having not been to Balti Triangle for some months, I just went there to check things out yesterday. I will write about this walk little by little, as I don't have time to write a long post.

The first discovery was this: A new site acquired by Al Faisal's.



It is near the beginning of Ladypool Road, about in front of Yaadigar.



The shop is still occupied by a video shop, but I don't imagine Al Faisal' keeps on running it and I would suppose it will be a restaurant, or at least some food related business.

Al Faisal's has renewed their premises in Stoney Lane, and recently opened an Italian restaurant Il Piatto in Ladypool Road. Evidently their business is going very well. As the Balti Triangle itself is rather in decline, it is shining like a star of hope.

Il Piatto's black board saying "Bono Sera" (the correct Italian expression being "Buona sera") let me down, though.


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An irrelevant topic. Yesterday, I went to Savannah Eritrean-Ethiopian restaurant for late lunch or early dinner.

On my way to Savannah, I passed in front of Jacky's Kitchen 美食坊 and read a notice that it will be closed on 24th and 25th December.

I could not believe my eyes as I did not think a restaurant dare to close on Christmas days. Evidently they don't have much demand for Christmas bookings.

I wondered if also the other Chinese restaurants close on these days.

Shahi Nan Kabab in Balti Triangle

Dim and I visited Shahi Nan Kabab on 8 December 2006.



This is how it looks like from the outside. Curiously it has two kitchens, one on the front, and the other in the rear. For this reason, the waiters were running to and fro all the time.

We did not eat very seriously. I had only vegetable biryani.



It is quite wet for Biryani (as wet as Italian risotto), and it was very hot (biryani is usually only slightly hot). First, the waiter did not bring the curry sauce that was announced on the menu, and I had to call his attention to it. It was quite nice, and again very hot.

Dim had mixed kebab, chips and garlic naan.



I don't remember exactly how much did it cost, but it looked bit too steep considering significant part of the chops was bone. Lamb chops were very nice, though.

This is garlic naan. Loads of garlic. Average.


All these and 1 tin of coke cost about £16. It is not particularly of good value, as we did not have full meal.

The interesting thing about this restaurant is that the most of the people were eating with their hand. If you want to feel to be in Bangladesh or Pakistan, this is a good place to go.

Balti Triangle Trail 3

Ladypool road was rather sad, but we noticed also some new shops. One was Persian restaurant and the other was Lebanese fastfood shop. Are the people getting tired of balti?

Then I found this Indian sweets shop, Milan. I guess it has nothing to do with the Italian fashion capital, or Mr. Berlusconi's football club. In Birmingham, most of the Indian sweets shops are small, rather poor looking, but this outlook impressed us, so we enter. Anyway, there is another big sweets shop also on Stratford Rd.




Inside, the shop was full of sweets, and had also savouries like Samosa, bhaji etc.

Actually we entered to buy these baklava we saw through window. Dim chose some of them just to sample.



When we tasted them at home, we noticed that they were somehow different from the Middle Eastern Baklava. First of all, they were not syrupy.

Especially the rolled ones (left side in the box) were very dry, The square ones (center) had unrecognisable yellow crunchy paste (?) inside. The one looked like a bird nest tasted most similar to real kataifi. The dark brown squre was unknown to us. Dim was disappointed as they were different from the Greek baklava, but they were nice in their own right.



I bought Ras Malai. There were 4 pieces in the packet, and costed £1.8. Ras Malai can take various shapes, and this one is flat oblong. Ras malai are the spongy milk cakes soaked in sweet milk cream. This one tasted good, with a hint of cardamon. It was not too sweets as many of "Indian" sweets. I would buy again.



This is the end of our Balti Triangle trail, but in some time new ones will follow.

Balti Triangle Trail 2

Exloring the Balti Triangle. Arriving there, Dim started to say he was hungry, although we did not go there for eating. In fact there were big chunks of steak waiting to be cooked at home. So we decided to buy something from a fastfood shop. He got inspiration from this place called Kafe Karachi. Pakistani, evidently.



Now, he always has problem in deciding what to order, and this occasion was not exception. Boredom for me.

Finally he decided on Chapal Kabab on naan, as we have never seen elsewhere.




It took quite a while to cook the meat on the grill. This is the chapal kabab on naan. Chapal kabab was a big meat patty made with a lot of chili, whole coriander seeds and whole cumin seeds. It was quite spicy. Dim started to complain about the whole seeds in the patty. I found the meat a bit stale. Otherwise ok for this type of food. £3 it was.

This shop was advatising a dish called Nihari offered Saturdays. Being curious, I checked what was Nihari on internet. Basically it is a curry stew made with beef on bones. I eat steak on bone, but beef marrow soup is still scary. I would give it a miss.



This is a large supermarket on Ladypool road. Something about the exterior decoration makes me think of street of Karachi or Islamabad. Inside there are all sorts of "Asian" and "Arabian" foodstuff. Good place to look for exotic ingredients.

Balti Triangle Trail 1

In Birmingham, there is a quarter commonly known as "Balti Triangle". As you can imagine, it is a triangle shaped area in south east of Birmingah, where there is a high concentration of Indian, Bangladishi, and Pakistani restaurants. If you live in Britain, you might remember the tornado that hit the area on 28 July 2005.



This is the view of Ladypool road, one of the main streets of the area. Bit gloomy, partly because of the weather.

Balti means a curry dish supposed to be born in Birmingham in the immigrants' community here. The idiosyncracy of balti is its container: it is served in a small metal bowl shaped pan with two handles, which is called "kalahi". My impression is that the recipe changes from restaurant to restaurant and does not have real "sine qua non" element. Balti became also local synonym for curry.

If I understood well, tens of years ago, the Balti triangle was the only place you could get decent "Indian" (British term for the people of India, Bangladeshi, and Pakistan is "Asian", but I guess "Indian" is commoner elsewhere) food in Birmingham. However, with the increase of "Indian" immigrants settled in other areas and the "Indian" food got more and more familiar to the British people, it is now easier to find good "Indian" restaurants elsewhere than in Balti triangle, so the restaurants in the area are in decline.

We come to the area from time to time, because it is still exotic somehow and we can find many unfamiliar things. I write about our recent visit in coming entries.