November Gathering...

We couldn't get into the originally planned visit to the Spice Oven in Caversham and because Mr Earl, has been talking for a while now about Dedworth Road we are relenting and heading Windsor way for our gathering in November.

http://www.thebinoyindiancuisine.co.uk/how-to-find-us

On www.tripadvisor.co.uk this outlet has got two reviews of this place and they seem to think it is a hidden gem in Windsor...so who are we to complain eh? Yes I know the picture is not very appetising but we have been to worse...

Let's meet a little earlier that normal at 7:30pm and see if we can meet in the pub down the road called The Queen which is one of three and not to be confused with the Black Horse which is just down the road... so for your satnavs...here is the address 282  Dedworth Road... SL4 4JR

This time last year - 2011

Thanks to those lovely software engineers at TimeHop I am able to tell where the FFCC gathered last year at this time last year... We were at The Ivy in Sonning High Street.

Friendly staff - and also cleverly a staff that adapted to our party size and suggested sharing dishes. (See our Wargrave post!) Good food and lousy parking but there is a lovely pub very nearby.

We liked the Ivy a lot.

8th Annual British Curry Awards

This November 26th will see the 8th Annual British Curry Awards where curry lovers, commentators, journalists and suppliers are gathering to celebrate a major industry in the UK - curry is a £3.5Bn business area.   I never knew either!?  Battersea Evolution is the venue, places & tables (we think) are still available for those wanting to go along to a glittering night check out the website... http://www.britishcurryaward.co.uk/index.html The FFCC will of course be there.

Wargrave Wonder & iPads - small must adapt though

OK, I know we took a risk having a curry in Wargrave but  it has to be said parking & Wargrave just don't go together !

Where do these people park??

Anyway moving on ...! this curry house is a bit or an enigma...we have tried to go here since, err... Well since before it was called The Grand Turmeric actually. We tried (and failed) even  to get a table when it was called The Curry Leaf and once, we did actually book a table and when we all rolled up, only to find it had closed for business the week before.

So actually getting in, albeit with different owners, and a new name still feels like an achievement. Even now booking does actually means waiting till they open around 6pm to even be able to book a table. They do have an answer phone but ignore the message they don't call you back!

The plan was to meet in the White Hart on the High Street (a proper pub not like the posher and frankly sterile St George & Dragon with precipitous car park The River Thames ominously beckoning your car  in or is that just me?)) for a pint ...

Strangely the Hart was a bit quiet with a few 'ex-TV people' in and all loudly talking about 1970s TV programming (Thames TV? whatever happened to you?), but the monsoon outside was probably keeping people indoors, or just the lack of Wargrave parking! ...

Then stage 2 of The Plan for the night was to wander along to the impressively named Grand Turmeric. I am not totally sure but I think this place is owned by a bigger curry house chain.. But the website was a bit vague.. But the hint of a central booking service suggests it might be.

It is however a small place with limited parking and a upmarket feel ... Somehow very fitting for POSH Wargrave - I am sure the rowing club approves... It fits well in the target demographic as the marketing experts would say.

It is shall we same small and cosy inside, you definitely could feel you were sitting a little too close to other tables is you ask us. But as we were a noises crowd I felt bad for the locals out for a quite meal...you don't want a loud bunch of chaps in that night I guess.

But this curry house is a first for the FFCC - this is the first place we have ever had our order taken on an iPad - I suppose we will see more of that soon.  It didn't seem to either

1) speed things up - took 45 minutes to get our starters, or
2) improve accuracy they messed up 3 orders out of 8....! C'Mon guys!!

The food is not standard it has lovely twists being sweeter in general and creamier than many curry houses and to be honest there isn't a massive choice, when it arrives it looks good though, portion size are shall we say.... respectable bit not large quantities ...

On little pointer - the menu is all rather confused...leaving you never really knowing if you need side dishes, or  if you need additional rice etc and the waiter serving us offered no advice... Could be why Tom ended up with a Naan style bread and a mainly potato based main course... To his surprise!

The food  does looks hand made and not churned from pots but in that lies the problem. Small restaurants like this suffers to cope when 8 guys turn up because they aren't geared up for large orders better aimed at couples so you always suffer if you are in bigger groups, and in our experience many restaurants don't change how they operate to cope with the clientele in that evening. Lesson to all curry houses out there we would say.  The GT suffered here, they want to deliver everything at the same time so someone's starter clearly is sitting around for a long time while they carefully prepare the rest...Hmmm suggest you need more than one chef?

The people are friendly but almost too reserved they could 'sell' the food more as some is scrumptious but our scores reflected the problem with small restaurants and large groups scale just stumps them.

Scores on her night :

Ed - 6.5
Juan - 6
Nick - 7
Gavin - 5.5
Ian - 6
James - 6
Tom - 4
Pete - 7

With an overall 6 this puts TGT in the low twenties on our lists now. A good little restaurant really, but not enough attention to detail drop the iPad and get the orders right is our tip.

Good place for a couples night out though e would say.

Travelling members!

What is missing from this picture - exactly there is no curry on the table! (Tut Tut...)

The Next Gathering....Wargrave

Right... finally The Grand Turmeric in Wargrave has got its act together and is open... after renaming itself from the Curry Leaf & and the Lemon something... so at last we can visit for our next gathering in October. As you can see they have done a rather nice job of the place... only problem is they seem to have forgotten to add any parking spaces...?  Here is the website...in case you need it.

http://www.theturmeric.co.uk/

However we have a plan...

If we meet in the lovely local pub we can park in their massive car park around the back...so we are going to meet about 8pm at the....White Hart across the road in Wargrave High Street then problem solved.

All reports suggest that the Turmeric is not your everyday common or garden curry house offering more delicate dishes and not swathes of sause hiding the meat... so fingers crossed they live up to it.

Everyone in ?

(PS : yes I know they look similar in the pictures...white paint was popular once remember!)

Ocean Village 2 (revisited)

Our regular readers will know that the Ocean Village in Maidenhead heading out toward the bridge to Slough has gone down in FFCC history as officially the worst curry house we had been too.

We caught them on a bad night when the food was iffy and the service worse and pretty unanimous condemnation followed.

But they say time is a healer, and in fairness to the owners a few take aways from there have been fine - so bravery took us over and we decides 5 years after our first encounter we would revisit.

Meeting just along the road at The Guardsmans Inn (which incidentally does a great curry & a pint nights on Wednesday!) we only had a stumble to the curry shop.

I feel sorry for the Ocean Village, the owner is a lovely chap and he has a set of flats across the road (75% sold proudly announced outside) he should be full of customers but last Friday he was struggling. The England v Moldova game on the telly was clearly hitting the custom.

We arrived with only 2 people in having a quite semi-romantic night out (no romance after a curry eh!) and the ambiance was well flat... He wasn't even playing any music.

Eating in a library was never going to be entertaining, but we ploughed on... The immortal question "what is your speciality?" was met with that ridiculous response that curry house so frequently use "It is all special!" made me think of the lead Indian character in the The Best Marigold Hotel movie - optimistic in the extreme...!

The Ocean Village is a strange place because it is one of those places that if you choose well you get great food if you choose wrong you get bland tasteless food that leaves you thinking that a Waitrose Curry for one would have been a far better idea. Which is exactly what we experienced a mix bag of surprise and apathy towards the food.

The tip from us would be stick to the 'meat' (hopefully lamb) curries and avoid the chicken (bland) and fish (tasteless) the mix starter is however well worth having as you get a sample of the best and it was all tasty.

This place does at least do hot curry so many places nowadays don't offer truly tasty hot curry - not all that macho crap of give me a Vindaloo but just bein able to turn out a curry hotter and tastier than your average. So many places are taming down their heat we find. My advice is try the Jalfrezi Lamb - nice and spicy and great tender meat.

The ambiance did bring the mood down a bit but the price is something you simply can't knock this place on as it was £25 a head with booze in so very reasonable I think you would agree.

How do we sum up The Ocean Village - they are nice people, the food is decent and occasionally good it just isn't a very special place, there just isn't anything to make it stand out nothing you put your finger on and say - that's great but it is not awful and it is no longer worthy of the damning we originally gave it.

25 years in business this year and that says something, you can get by with decent offerings - but in the world of curry things have moved on so much will it survive another 25 like this?

Would we go back - yes in 5 more years. The all important scores - from the 6 people there...

Juan 6
Gavin 6
Ian 7
Rob 7
Nick 7
Pete 7

Website : http://www.oceanvillageuk.com/