Taj Mahal, Sandy. (1st April 2015)

Price: £10-£15
Score: 8.833

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The boys decided to keep their next choice of restaurant local and decided on the newly refurbished and newly managed Taj Mahal (previously The Akbar).  Wednesday is banquet night, starter, main, side, naan or rice and coffee for £9.95 which sounded superb value.  

 

Bring your own alcohol to the restaurant means that you don't pay the normally expensive prices for beer.

 

Poppadoms first, with four pickles, plenty of them too, included a chilli sauce with the usual mint sauce, mango chutney and onion salad.

Starters included three portions of Paneer Tikka for Simon, Lee and Tony, Paul decided on the Chicken Chat with a puree which on reflection was probably not needed.  The Paneer scored 9 from all, a very good start to the meal. 

 

Continuing the banqueting night Simon went for Chicken Sagwala, a medium spiced curry with spinach and a boiled egg.  Paul followed Simon's lead and had the same.  Lee and Tony opted for the Veg Balti, one vindaloo hot and one not!  Tony went for mushroom rice, Paul a special rice whilst Simon and Lee went for a chilli naan and cheese naan respectively.  A plethora of side dishes included a lot of spinach combined with other ingredients to give six in total.

 

• Sag Paneer
• Sag Aloo
• Sag Chana
• Sag Chandra (scrambled egg with spinach)
• Mutter Panner
• Mushroom and Potato Bhaji

Not unsurprisingly there was a lot left over, due to the over ordering rather than the quality of the food.  Mains scored a solid 8.5 from Lee and Tony, Simon scored his at 8 as it lacked a bit of spice.

 

An excellent standard of service and exceptional value for money, worked out that the banquet night saves approximately £5 per meal.  Far better than the old Akbar and well worth a visit to enjoy the good standard of food - in the top 10 of our restaurants visited.

 

144 London Road

Sandy

Bedfordshire

SG19 1DN

 

Tel:

Web: http://tajmahalsandy.co.uk/

 

Lounge India, Sandy (27th March 2014)

Score: 7.417
Price: £10-15

NOT RECOMMENDED

Tonight's outing of the SLT Club was to finally make it to the Lounge India in Sandy - less than a mile from home and yet the SLT have taken 3 years to make it here on an official night! 

The evening was worth the wait! After poppadoms and chutneys, there was a medley of starters, including a vegetable pakora platter, aloo chat on puree with green chilli, chicken momo and lamb samosa.

For mains, the boys had veg Balti madras, chicken bhuna, chicken Bengal and chicken terror served with a selection of rice and breads and sides including chilli garlic mushroom (which was very mushroomy, garlicky and spicy), mutter paneer and mushroom bhaji.

Coffees followed and the obligatory pineapple ice cream for Tony! Simon chose a tea however this was charged on the bill as only 'coffee is included in the deal.....'

The food was good however the service was very poor - lacking basic attention to detail which resulted in a score of 5.667 out of 10!

Vfm was ok as the £10.95 banquet night was on, but not as good as expected - score was 7.667 out of 10

Overall, the Lounge India did ok, however the boys (especially Lee) felt guilty eating somewhere other than the Gandhi when eating in their home town! The score of 7.417 puts the Lounge India average at best 

Tel: 01767 699986

Website: http://www.loungeindiarestaurant.co.uk/