BENGAL FUSION
21 April 2007, Dim and I went to a Bangladeshi fusion restaurant in Lye. Lye is a small town near Stourbridge, and it took us more than 30 min of bus ride (I guess it takes about 20 min with car). It is a very small town, but there is a dozen of Indian restaurants and people come to enjoy the food.
First, 2 popadoms. They were offered before we placed the order, and we were not charged.
Came with 4 types of dips and salads. They were nice, but not exceptional.
This is Dim's starter, 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.
This is my starter, Sheesh Kebabs. Kebabs were succulent, well-spiced, tasty, but bright-red! Why they wanted to make them so artificially red is beyond me.
These are the main course, with accompaniments. From the bottom, anti-clockwise, Cheese naan, Shatkora with lamb tikka (gRichly spiced dish infused with Bengal limeh), vegetable rice, and Sabzi Gost Archari (gcrich and spicy herbs and spiced together with chicken, lamb and vegetablesh)
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.
When you ask the bill in British curry restaurants, you are usually offered for free mint chocholates. Here, they brought this odd tray. I have never seen anything so odd before!
We spent £28 including tip. but not including drinks (BYO). It is a pity that it is not close to our home.
Book before you go, especially during the weekends. Here is the websitehttp://www.bengalfusion.co.uk/.
