I realised, as I was hungrily waiting for my Tamatanga feast to arrive on a sunny afternoon, that all my favourite curryhouses in Leicester are gone now. I’m not even sure there’s one I’ve eaten at that’s still standing.
Gone are T&K Balti, Rise of the Raj, The Taj Mahal, The Curryhouse, Tiffin and Anjuna. Plus a place on Uppingham Road I can’t remember the name of.
Tamatanga in Leicester city centre’s Shires Lane is a chain restaurant with three other locations and it’s not an old-fashioned curryhouse but I thought I’d give it a go. And it was a flawless feast of fiery flavours that saw me go from starving to stuffed in about 15 minutes.
READ MORE: I tried Subway’s ‘bold’ Mexican celebrations – and it was basically a crisp sandwich
I opted for a Punjabi Butter Chicken Curry and the sauce was so smooth and silky it must have been – even sitting in a clear plastic box – one of the most appetising I’d seen. Big chunks of chicken floated around irresistibly and rather than start with poppadoms like a civilised person I had to just dive right in.
I ripped a bit off one the two garlic and coriander naans and dunked it into the sauce. It was great. Everything was perfectly balanced, the spices and heat were at nice levels and every mouthful was faultless.
I’d also ordered a quartet of fat, dark and succulent bhajis. The chopped onion squelched a little as I bit in and there was a powerful onion flavour.
The meal came to £31.93 including Deliveroo charges
They weren’t quite as tasty as the curry sauce though, so I had a couple more dunking them, which was amazing.
When you’re in a curryhouse waiting for the mains, pigging out on the poppadoms seems like a real joy but I didn’t want to stuff myself unnecessarily so I went slowly on them, trying the various dips.
The onions had a nice kick that tasted a bit like cider vinegar. The chutney was smooth and full of flavour. But neither could compare to the sauce – it was dunking time again.
Pretty soon I couldn’t eat any more. The Going Solo meal, which was everything except the bhajis and poppadoms, was £18.25, which isn’t bad for a really great meal. With the extras and the Deliveroo costs it came to just under £32 but it would have been plenty to feed two people.
In conclusion, it was the best curry I’ve had in years and the whole meal was flawless.
Our rating: 5/5
Official food hygiene rating: 5/5
Tamatanga did not know we would be doing a review and we paid for our food