Mother India

Okay, so for my friend Emily's birthday yesterday we went out to a place called Mother India's Café. Apparently, it's "...a twist on tapas. The twist is, of course, that Indian food replaces Spanish."  Hmmm. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Or at least what I was thinking. But Emily had chosen it on the fact that there was always a queue outside, so at least it had something going for it.

We got there and had to wait for about 40 minutes, despite being told we'd have to wait 20. Oh well, it smelled delicious and we got some free poppadoms for our wait. (And anyway, in the end, it was totally worth it.)

It suggests on the menu '3 or 4 dishes between two people' so naturally we got 13 for a table of six; plus rice and chapattis....

And that's not the half of it. Here is my plate:

That it fish pakoras at the top, the brown stuff is lamb saag, and the garlic chilli prawns are at the bottom (along with fried rice, chapatti, raita, and coriander chutney which was amazing). Everything was delicious. And I'm not just saying that, it was seriously good. I had the leftovers for tea yesterday and managed to sample a couple more - there was a paneer curry (so spicy - my Singaporean friend Tania ordered it off the menu... Some people...), some chickpea and potato thing that was delicious - I've never had such tender chickpeas - and some butter chicken that was also really good. I mean, just everything was good. I've never been out for a meal and enjoyed absolutely everything before.

In fact, my revered mama is coming for a visit tomorrow - I know, it's like visit city - and I plan to take her here on Friday. She loves curry!

On a scale of one to yummy, possibly an 18.5, only taking a point or two off for the wait.

I know there's not been much food recently that's actually from Emily's Kitchen but there have been a lot of special occasions this past week or so and I'm sure it'll all calm down soon enough. Never fear, my freezer-emptying must start soon!