Devana Tandoori

Sector: Christchurch Road
Stardate: 7 May 2003
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Surprising we hadn't reviewed the Devana sooner - it's just across the road from the sports centre. Ah yes, I remember why...
AMBIANCE Lift music

Decor: Cosy: maroon painted tapestryesque effort on the walls around us, Shiva on the back wall and some pleasant trees by the door. One of those ugly oil wick candle things on the table.
Music: James Last and The Carpenters play a painful medley of Charriots of Fire and El Condor Paso, although the version of Let It Be playing in the toilet was reported to be "uplifting and inspiring".

SERVICE

Unremarkable

Time to get served: Around 30 minutes.

Nothing else of note.

STARTERS

OK (what we had was anyway)

Popadums: Not had.
Onion bagees: Quite tasty but very moist, could have done with a more crispy finish.

MAIN COURSES AND DESERTS

Mediocre

Lamb Sag: "Saggy: 5.5/10" (Challinor).
Lamb Dopiaza: "Bog standard. Does what it says on the tin (that it came out of)." (Joshi).
Prawn Bhuna: "OK, more prawns than anything else though." (Hogan).

Peshwari Naan: just sugary bread.
Today's Joshi wisdom: "Rice. The easiest thing to cook, but to make it nice requires spending some time over it - good rice, good restaurant." Not much time had been spent on this rice.

MISCELLANEOUS

Buffet option

Egg-fried rice

Sweet Lassi

Liqueur coffees

Hot towels

Sweets with bill

Key: Yes No Too drunk to remember

Mint chocs with the bill.

FINAL VERDICT

In general the curries here tend to be rather sweet and generous with the food colouring, but nonetheless tasty; certainly a few trekers rank the Devana highly. On this occasion the dishes were all pretty bland and uninteresting. Challinor's puns brought Joshi's appraisal of the evening down from a 2.5 to a 2. When Challinor started punning to Andrew Lloyd Webber on the pan pipes, Joshi requested lowering it to 1.5.

Our consensus award for the Devana is 2 Cobras: