Papaya (Sri Lankan and South Indian cuisine), 161 Northfield Avenue London W13 9QT

One warm Saturday, after helping our friends move their lock stock into their new flat, they were lovely enough to treat us to a brilliant meal at this fabulous restaurant, now firmly a new favourite at the top of my list.

Not being too familiar with this part of town, I can't quite tell you where it is in the scheme of things, but from what I saw, this restaurant is located on a street with a few other restaurants, Maxim's being one of them (this is a place which I will get around to trying out soon).

Hunger in place, greed firmly tucked down, we let our friends do the ordering, seeing as they'd been there before, and thus, knew best. Letting me do any form of ordering while in a hungry state is surely one way to end up with takeaway, but also not seen as socially acceptable in polite company.

While our friends chose the nicest and best(est) items on the menu, I tried to calm my greed down by taking pictures of the menu and other people's tables. Service was good in this place, with one particularly friendly waiter popping up (literally) now and again to ask us if we needed anything.

The only downside to this meal was the one waiter who took our order, who, when asked if he could serve us some poppadum with the main course (so that we could eat it crushed into the rice), he looked hesitantly at us for a bit, and then said, 'It's something to have with beer, nicer with beer. I'll bring it as a starter?'

We then said, 'Erm, no, could we please have it with our main course, as that's the way we like to eat it'.

More shaking of the head, and looks of disagreement.

Hey, if I want to eat poppadum standing upside down with peppermint and strawberry ice-cream, let me.

Anyhow, that aside, everything else was lovely, absolutely lovely; the place, the food, the (other) waiters. I couldn't fault it one bit.

Egg rotti £3.50 (eggs, onions, green chillies, curry leaves and herb mixture cooked in folded rotti)

This was similar to the roti paratha with egg (or roti telur) that is found in Malaysia, which is why we ordered it. Knowing we were sharing our dishes, this was sliced into 4 for us, and my piece was absolutely delicious.

Flaky, buttery pastry enveloping an eggy mixture, sometimes surprising you with a fiery green chilli bit, and hints of onion throughout the bread. We had this as just something to be tried on the side, but it would have been excellent dipped into any of the curry sauces that came after it.

Mutton biriyani £8.50 (rice mixed with mutton and spices, served with boiled egg)

Of all the biriyanis I’ve eaten, this was one of the best. With each grain of rice perfectly cooked (al dante, with just enough bite), and with just enough spice coating the grains, I would have happily eaten the rice alone, without the meat.

Thing is, the meat was also just as perfectly cooked, each piece being so so so tender, and oh so very flavourful. Lamb has its unique taste, which makes some people not like it, but I love the taste of lamb, and this unique taste shone through loud and proud in this dish.

Best of all, it had a whole hard boiled egg in the middle of the rice, like a little treasure waiting to be found. Oh how we scarfed it down.

Chicken biriyani £8.50

We also had the chicken version of this dish, just to try it out. Conclusion? While this is good, the mutton was way better. The chicken pieces let the dish down as they were quite dry, and each piece felt like it had been cooked, and cooked again. The rice was good though.

Fish curry (Sri Lankan style) £7.50

One of the things we like to order when we’re having curry is fish, because not many places cook fish curry well so we kinda use it as a benchmark to see how good a place is. Using the same checklist that we use for other fish curries, this has to be one of the best. Soft, almost like cotton candy in texture pieces of fish came in a bowl of velvety, rich, spicy and excellently flavoured curry sauce. Try as I might have, I couldn’t make out what mixture of herbs and spices were in it, and how they managed to make the flavour blend so well into the fish.

The sauce alone kept us entertained for a fair bit of the meal, and if that had been served to us without the fish, we would have been (almost) just as pleased. It was that good.

Devilled wild boar £8

The name refers to the specific way in which this dish is cooked. While I have had many versions of this dish elsewhere, I’ve never had the wild boar version before. After tasting this dish, I can probably conclude that this is the best version you’ll find in London.

(If anyone is yelling indignantly at this point, eager to prove that they’ve had better elsewhere, please prove your point by buying me dinner.)

With big chunks of wild boar meat (not enough of it!) cooked to perfection (not too tough, not too dry, just perfect), the combination of slightly dry-ish curry sauce, fragrant fried herbs and spices really set the meat off, to a league of its own.

The onions and pepper slices used in the dish were also crunchy, probably thrown in just at the last minute to retain its texture.

Would I recommend this place? Can’t sing higher praises than I’ve already done, and for now, this sits firmly as one of the tastiest curry places in town. Wait till I find the next contender.

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Chennai Dosa, 353 High Street North, Manor Park, E12 6PQ (East Ham tube station)

As you come out of East Ham station, there are 3 Chennai Dosa restaurants (similar sign boards, similar name, similar colours in fact) on the high street. Which one you go to depends on who recommended it to you.

The one we went to was the third one down from East Ham tube station, after the second vegetarian one with the long queues. As we went by the queues, I wondered if that meant we were going to the less popular one, but my friend then said that the queues were for the vegetarian restaurant, so I guess you can’t compare the two.

Less queues = faster service

For those of you who don’t know, there is a big difference in the type of food served in Northern and Southern Indian cuisine. I’m not exactly sure what the main differentiating factor is, but from what I’ve had, Northern Indian cuisine consists of chapatis, fried meats and vegetables, and curries, while Southern Indian food is mainly dosa (or thosai depending on where you come from) and idli, with the Southern version of the cuisine being based more on steamed and roasted items.

Being the non-choosy kinda people, we like all of it.

The ground floor of the restaurant looks pretty much like any other takeaway shop with bright lights, a few tables for diners, and a counter where orders are placed. We went to the first floor, which had some more tables but was set up to create a comfortable (although simple in decor) environment for their diners, which seemed to be mostly larger groups of people. Where the cool kids hang out.

The menu is here another one which I like, consisting of a piece of paper, printed on both sides with little boxes for you to write the quantities on. As the prices were very reasonable, the four of us decided to order more than what the usual equation would have required us to. This time, the formula we used was:

n + 3 (instead of n + 1), with n being the number of diners

Mini idli with sambhar £2.20

The first dish to arrive at the table, and spoons delved into the dish almost immediately. Oohs and aahs and oh this is nice.

Little idlis (steamed rice cakes, soft and slightly chewy with a sour after taste) swimming in sambar sauce which tasted similar to dhal (chickpea curry).

Chicken kotthu parotta £3.75

Parotta is different from paratha, as the latter is Northern Indian (this is what Wikipedia says anyway). Thing is, unless I’ve had parathas disguised as parottas, or vice-versa, I can’t really see the difference between the two types of rotis.

This dish consists of parotta (closest thing I can liken it to is flakey puff pastry, but chewy) cut into little pieces, and cooked with egg, chicken and a spicy sauce.

As I was eating this, I tried to see what was in the dish but couldn’t make out what was in it, although onions was one of the main ingredients, from what I could tell. Taste-wise, it was very flavourful and eggy, and each bite made me want more. Similar to fried noodles (?), definitely one on the repeat-order list.

Mango lassi £1.75 (sweet)

Creamy and thick with full flavours of mango bursting through with each sip, soothing the spiciness of the dish mentioned above.

This is probably as close as it gets to eating dessert while having your main meal. Some people turn up their noses at that, but I say, the more the merrier.

Kal Dosa with Special Chicken Masala £3.75

The chicken masala curry that came with this dish was one of the nicest I’ve had. Tender, flavoured with spices and with just enough heat coming through the dish, it managed to stand out as the super-star of the dinner, fighting for space with the other super-stars (there were quite a few).

The dosa (or thosai) was nicely chewy, going well with the sauce.

Super-star chicken deserves a closer look.

Parotta £0.80 a piece

This is so similar to the roti parathas I’ve had before, that I really wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference if I hadn’t known there was any. Chewy like dense puff pastry, flavoured with eggs and ghee, this made a fabulous side-bread to chew on, even without being dipped in any curry.

Mutton masala dosa £3.99

When it arrived, I took one look at it and assumed that it would be like the chicken masala one, with the curry on the side. My friend then had a little prod at the dosa and revealed …

A treasure trove of potato with onions, and lots of mutton, very flavourful mutton. Each mouthful had little applauds of spice, rich meaty flavour, and fluffy potatoes cooked to perfection.

Special of the day – Nethili fish fry £2.75

When we were shown to our tables, we saw bright posters on the wall with the specials of the day. The one that just had to be ordered was the Nethili fish fry as I had been wanting fish the whole day, so even though I had not a clue what Nethili was (or where), I just had to order it.

It’s pretty much little fish deep marinated in spices and deep fried. Although only little, they managed to retain moisture and flavour, and the cooking process made each one very crispy and sweet.

Mutton Dum Biriyani £3.95

With more mutton than rice, this was our kind of dish. The rice and mutton was tender, yet not over-cooked, and nicely coated with spices.

Fluffy rice, tender mutton, creamy yoghurty minty sauce and 3 other diners who were already full meant that I had it all to myself.

Would I return to this restaurant? Most definitely so. In fact, halfway during the meal, we wanted to order some dishes to take-away, that’s how good it was.

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