Kathmandu

Thursday 3rd June 2010

This is a Crackerjack review of Kathmandu Restaurant. Do you agree? Rate and review this venue.

Food and drink: 8 / 10.
Service: 8 / 10.
Atmosphere: 7 / 10.
Value for money: 8 / 10.

There is something reassuringly retro about the humble floater coffee. Once the preserve of Berni Inns and seaside hotels, they are still a permanent fixture on the laminated dessert menu of most Indian restaurants.

It’s as if every Indian restaurateur in the land feels as if he has to put a selection of alcoholic liqueur coffees on the menu, just as he has to serve pints of Kingfisher or Cobra at nearly £5 a pint and has to serve kulfi ice creams in plastic cones that look like they should have a frozen ball of bubblegum at the bottom.

And so there we were at the end of our meal at Kathmandu, loosening our belts, sewing the buttons back on to our bursting-at-the-seams shirts and ordering – you guessed it – two Caribbean coffees.

And, boy, were they good. Served in tall glasses with handles, they were tooth-achingly sweet and very alcoholic and, yes, of course we sucked the hot rum-flavoured coffee through the thick layer of cream and ended up with cream moustaches.

Well, we were in a good mood because we had just concluded a very fine dinner indeed.

But then that has always been the case at Kathmandu, a family-run restaurant opposite the Colston Hall specialising in Nepalese and Indian food.

The restaurant opened in 2003 after the owners had run takeaway outlets in Easton and Gloucester Road. They still import their own spices from a village in their home country of Nepal.

Once a contemporary Italian restaurant, the room has the smoked glass windows, shiny black tiled floor and black lacquer tables of its predecessor and although it has traditional music and colourful Nepalese prints on the walls, it looks far removed from the usual flock wallpapered Indian eatery.

The female staff wears traditional Nepalese costumes, but the male waiters are dressed in more familiar Indian restaurant attire – black waistcoats, white shirts and black ties. They are all incredibly friendly and polite.

There are red candles on the tables and a few framed photos of famous customers – most of them visitors to the Colston Hall. There was a picture of Bill Bailey near our table. Now, there’s a man who looks like he enjoys a curry and a pint of Cobra – not to mention a floater coffee.

The menu features most of the Anglo-Indian favourites – chicken tikka bhuna, king prawn masalla, lamb korma – but there is also a section dedicated to less familiar Nepalese dishes.

These include sea bass nani (sea bass fillets cooked in a creamy sauce and served with butter beans and asparagus), chicken natapole (chicken cooked with tomato and coriander) and salmon rani biryani (flakes of salmon cooked in basmati rice served with vegetable curry). Having eaten many of these before, we went for the more Indian route.

After excellent chutneys (fresh, vibrant and the coriander, onion, green chilli and tomato one must be one of the best we’ve tasted in any Indian restaurant in Bristol), we waded in with chicken tikka (£3.95) and sheesh kebab (£3.95).

The chicken tikka was a revelation. Tender, juicy and delicately spiced, it was a far cry from the chewy chunks of chicken you often get and they weren’t that usual radioactive Tango colour either.

The sheesh kebab was just as impressive – two fat sausages of minced lamb with plenty of mint and coriander in the mix to give it flavour and plenty of green chillies to give it a surprising amount of eye-watering heat.

Moving on, chicken rogan josh (£7.95) was a superior version of this much used and abused high street Indian staple.  The chicken was indecently tender and the tomatoey sauce was well balanced and mild, yet aromatic and perfect for mopping up with the crisp, thin and fruity garlic naan bread (£2.40) which was like a huge, garlicky garibaldi biscuit, albeit one that you wouldn’t be able to dunk into your tea.
Garlic lamb (£8.95) had a similarly well-structured sauce – delicate, restrained in its spiciness but with a generous amount of soft garlic cloves bobbing around like lifebuoys.

Desserts were the usual bought-in selection listed on a colourful pictorial menu that wouldn’t look out of place on the wall of a nursery.

We bypassed all the wacky puds and went for the simple pistachio kulfi (£2.50), which was served as two slices on a Bristol Blue plate topped with chopped pistachios and almonds.

All of which paved the way for those splendid Del Boy-esque floater coffees, before we waddled off into the night feeling very full but very content indeed.

Mark Taylor
 

Wheelchair access: No
Prices: Starters from £3.95; main courses from £6.50; desserts from £2.50

This is a Crackerjack review of Kathmandu Restaurant. Do you agree? Rate and review this venue.