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

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.