From Pars to Super Pars

Pars, Iranian (Persian) grocery shop on Hagley Road, has been taken over by Super Pars.


Apart from the addition of vegetable section in front, the arrangement inside looked pretty much the same.

New Entry: Rajdoot Tandoori

This week I went to Rajdoot Tandoori and sampled Christmas lunch.

Rajdoot Tandoori



Truth or not, Rajdoot claims to be the first to introduce tandoori oven to UK (their website says 'Europe', but I assume this Europe includes Great Britain).


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The name Rajdoot reminds me of an Indian guy I met in Birmingham. He was from South India and was doing PhD when we met. We used to live in the same area of Birmingham and to take sometimes the same bus from the University to our flats.

He was a very handsome guy, although too short to be really good looking. He had a really nice character as well and was always oozing his kindness and charm. He was here with his wife and I thought it cool how nicely he treated his wife. We used to chat in the bus when it happened. So, it was not a great relationship, but he was one of these persons that you cannot forget and don't want to forget in your life.

He must have been very good in his subject and, when he finished PhD, he was invited to do PosDoc in Princeton.

It was about two years ago, but I often remember about him, when I take a bus home from the uni. His name was Rajdoot.

New Entry: Ananda Bhavan

As I promised yesterday, I uploaded the detailed review of new South-Indian restaurant Ananda Bhavan.

http://www.wonderbirmingham.co.uk/birmingham/ananda_en.html



It is a brilliant place, so I hope you don't feel put off by the location. Even if you don't have a car, it is not difficult to arrive by bus: just get eighty-something buses (80, 82, 87, 88) from New Street station. They are reasonably frequent.

I wish you all a nice week.


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Post scriptum of 11 December 2008.

Now this restaurant has a new signage.



And I revisited this place and added some food photos on the same page. I hope to come back soon for the third time.

Mr Shah is back!?

Passing Fletcher's Walk today, I noticed the place that used to be Casa Lamisa was accepting Christmas booking. Getting closer to see what kind of restaurant is opening, I was surprised to read its name.



It is Shah's! Well, the name might not say so much, but I am pretty sure this logo belongs to that Shah's "Indian" restaurant used to be in Station Street, in the premises now occupied by the Chinese restaurant BBQ Village.

Is Mr. Shah returning from his retirement? Well, we will find out in December.

More new restaurants in Chinatown area

I am in Easter break from today until Thursday next week. Wow.

As yesterday was like a Friday to me, I decided to go to the Lebanese restaurant Beirut where I have been wanting to go (I reviewed it here), but for one reason or the other, it was put off until yesterday. I will write a review very soon.

Before going to Beirut, I walked around the area between Holloway Circus to Chinatown, and found some new restaurants. I am not sure when I will have a chance to visit them, but here I make a memo about them.

First, the Shisha cafe in the Smallbrook Queensway is not Indian restaurant, "Royal Bengal".



The menu is like the one of usual curry houses; nothing new.


Then, next to Chung Ying Garden (Thorp St.), now there is a large Caribbean buffet restaurant called Cuizene.



When we walked in front at around 9:00 there wasn't anyone eating. It is a bit worrying considering it was practically a "Friday night". We grabbed a flyer, which says, all-you-can-eat lunch buffet for £5.99 and dinner buffet for £11.99 (limited choice during the lunch hours). Not being a big eater, I am not keen of buffet (I feel like losing money!), but I might go to see what's on offer.

Lastly there is a Polish restaurant in Hurst street.



The menu looks rather limited, but I might give it a go very soon.

I posted the addresses and phone numbers of Cuizene and Duet on WonderBirmingham (click here).

Moseley Farmers' Market

Today was the 4th Saturday of the month, which is the Farmers' Market day for Moseley.

I did not need to buy anything, but I went there also to take some photos of Moseley area for WonderBirmingham website.

I took the bus No. 50. There was a road work on Moseley Road, and it took quite a white to arrive at Moseley.

This is how it was at around 12 o'clock.



It was larger than what I remember, and maybe there were more stalls than at Harborne's market.



I found there some sellers whom I saw in Stratford a week ago, like Hilltop Farm, Woodhouse Farm, and the apple man. There was of course the ostrich burger stall, too. I have seen some also at Harborne. It is unavoidable that the same sellers come, as the places are so close. And, for some reason, the fishmonger close to my house has a stall, too.

I noticed also the restaurant Deolali installed a stall selling kebab on nan for £3. Clever people.

For the other farmers' market day in Birmingham, please refer to this page.

I did not buy anything (also because I did not want to go home right away), but took many photos.

After the stroll, I started to feel hungry, so went into this balti house + sweet centre to buy some samosas.



This is one of them. I bought two veggie and two meat samosas, and paid £2.20, Samosas are cheaper in the area I live, but I think this is the average price. I got also two dips, but I don't know if I was charge for it.



This is meat samosa. Meat filling was generous and nicely spiced. The quality of the mince was not the best and had some hard bits, but we cannot really expect high quality mince for this price. It was nice enough.



This is the vegetarian version. I put some mint yogurt sauce. It was nice enough, but I would have preferred little more chili, yes, green chili.



There are a few restaurants in Moseley that I want to visit, but with so many places to visit and to revisit, I don't know when I will be able to. *sigh*

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More information about Farmers' Market in Birmingham, see this page.

Khazana (Vegetarian Indian Buffet)

9 May 2007 Dim and I went to this Indian-Chinese Vegetarian Buffet restaurant in Handsworth area.

This is interior. It made us forget to be in Handsworth (for those who doesn't know Birmingham, Handsworth is not a particularly good area where gun crimes and even a riot happened recently).

We went for the weekend buffet for £9.99/head. For this price we could have about 30 kinds of starters, main courses, soups and sweets. There was a plenty to choose from.

There was also a la carte menu, but it seemed a bit over priced.

This is my starter.


There were good things and bad things. Chapatti and square gram flour cake were good, but the rest were so and so. The orange rice was rather insipid and cold. Dhosa was ok, but I think I don't like Dhosa from the start.

Below is Dim's dish. The noodles at the centre of dish were particularly disgusting: they tasted as if they were burnt even if they were not. Also the white stuff was very strang: something savoury with sweet yogurt with it.



This is my main dish. Different from the starters, there two curries were quite nice: one is muttar panir and the other was curry with sticky potato. Unfortunately rice was bit dry and devoid of fragrance. I would have faired better with chapatti.



But the best things I ate here were these soups: left is mixed beans soup and right is sambar. They both very spicy and flavoursome.


For desserts there were carrot halwa and this mango soup, which was soothing and enjoyable.

In total, it was interesting experience, but not entirely positive. There were very nice things, but also some less than average food. I might want to return, but I would choose more carefully what I will eat.

For those who interested, you can find all the necessary information on their website.

Eastern Promise @ Lye

I went to an Indian (I am not sure of the nationality, but was probably Bangladeshi) restaurant in Lye, near Stourbridge, with 4 friends.

As I wrote some days ago, Dim and I went to a restaurant called Bengal Lounge in Lye and had very good dinner, so I had high expectations.


The food, however, let me down. I had prawn pathia, but it was too sugarly and had very little or no sourness that pathia dish must have. Besides, it was too red! It should come from food dye. I don't like un-natural, and especially un-necessary colouring in my food.

I also had Bindhi bhaji (indian style okra dish) and boiled rice. The quantity of rice was not sufficient to me.

The prawn madras that a friend of mine took was even worse. I don't know why but it was BITTER and it was not enough hot (chili wise) as madras should be.

The other people seemed to fared better. Especially the fish special (of which I don't remember the name) was quite beautiful and tasted good. I did not tried the other two people's dish, but they said ok.

The service, however, was excellent and the waiters very attentive and polite. We were offered free coffee at the end.

The bill of 5 popadoms & dips, 4 main dishes, 4 rice or naans, and 1 special dish (which came with rice) came to less than £45. If the food was a bit better, it would have been better value.

If you are interested to go, the address can be found here:

http://www.birminghamplus.com/items/items.asp?iid=1993