REVIEW: Total BYOBags
The Time: June 18, 8pmBooking Name: Mr Walter Hill
The Pub Aforehand: The Queen’s Park Café
In Attendance: Trampy, The Tramp, The Gheezer, Lime Pickle, Sir Spicy Lover, Ravi Peshwari, Jalfrezi and Stu (callsign pending).
Decor: Comfortable and cosy, with a stress-reducing fishtank situated at the entrance and an impressive slatted ceiling garden arrangement above our heads. Some Clubbers did however comment that the old-fashioned sinks in the bathroom could be mistaken for urinals by tipsy patrons.
Expectations: A real unknown quantity. Even though The Bulldosa lived round the corner from Anarkali for years, he never visited it, although he did draw the attention of the Club to an online review that made it sound like a Roadhouse-esque rough-and-tumble joint. Perhaps that’s why The Bulldosa never even turned up. What a pansy.
The Experience:If Trampy has an overarching credo, an adamantium maxim, a platinum rule above all golden rules, it’s this: always wake up in the same city as your tea. It just makes life simpler. There are occasions, though, when your tea may well be in another postcode, or even 50 miles away. This is the monthly dilemma faced by Lime Pickle, the sole Edinburgh-based member of TATTGOC. And since Trampy has been bivouacing with Lime Pickle while soaking up the cinematic gravy of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (as well as all the free booze at the attendant swirl of parties), they both faced a train journey west to attend June’s gathering. This ambitious expedition promised to catapult our hardy band of cosmic currynauts further south than they’d ever dared venture before. Who would survive? And what would be left of them?
After coasting into Glasgow and hopping onto another train at Queen’s Street Station, our two heroes bumped into The Tramp and Sir Spicy Lover, who seemed as mentally prepared for the journey as Ben Fogle and that other rugger-ish guy heading for the South Pole on foot. A mere two stops later and our quartet emerged in the south side, where it become pleasingly obvious that the evening’s key orienteering points – the admired Queen’s Park Café, the Anarkali itself and the Victoria Road Oddbins – were in extremely close proximity. Settling into the warm embrace of the Queen’s Park Café, a traditionally-minded boozer already doing brisk business in the early evening, the reunited friends exchanged tales of ribaldry and excess while waiting for the rest of the troop. Presently, Ravi Peshwari and The Gheezer hove into view, with the impish Jalfrezi not far behind. Completing the roll call for June was Stu, a known acquaintance of The Tramp and revered southside “fixer”.
Notable absentees included lethal darts tag-team The Bulldosa/The Birmingham Wan and Rogan Josh Homme (unfortunately charged with doing some actual work during the Film Festival). TATTGOC’s fearless legal counsel Rumpole Of The Balti almost made it, but a judicial emergency steered his fate away from our feast. Even without the full complement of galacticos, the banter was gallus (although Ravi Peshwari, always a careful man, had brought along a copy of Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize-winning The God Of Small Things, presumably in case the chat turned out to be stinking – or perhaps as an appropriate stand-in for TATTGOC's very own god of small things, Rabbie Shankar?). As the assembled wet their whistle, dipped their wick and greased their beals with Tennent’s, Trampy tromped over the road to Oddbins for an additional slab of “yellow soldiers” that, though fetched from the cellar, were cool but not ice-cold. The eight-strong team then rendezvoused directly outside Anarkali, enjoying the lingering daylight and admiring Ravi Peshwari’s wicked-awesome ride (pictured above).
While the Anarkali wasn’t exactly stowed when we arrived, a conspicuous table set out for eight featured a wrapped gift and helium balloon imprinted with “Happy 18th Birthday”. What a lovely surprise! Even if Walter Hill’s 18th birthday was back in 1960. It soon became apparent that Anarkali was hosting two eight-strong parties this particular evening, and minutes after our arrival, a young man lionised by family and friends entered to claim his prize. (“He’s been oot buying cider all day,” confided his mother, later). Our attentive waiter immediately offered to place our slab of soldiers in the fridge, once we’d dished out the necessary eight cans round the table. And just before The Tramp could raise a toast, Lime Pickle produced two packages for TATTGOC’s modest founders – the finest hand-fired ceramic mugs, proudly emblazoned with the brand-new TATTGOC coat-of-arms, melding Indian cooking iconography with a modern sensibility to fully encapsulate the philosophy of the brotherhood. These most holiest of grails were heavily braided with portent and symbology, and it might take an entire future post to unpack their full meaning. In the meantime, rest assured they made Tennent’s taste magic.From Anarkali’s comprehensive selection of starters, Trampy decided to play things pretty safe: three portions of mixed pakora to share, plus a couple of spiced mushroom dosas to, y’know, mix things up a little. The traditional poppadoms and dips swiftly arrived to keep the gang occupied, and things seemed to be off to a buoyant start. The combination of stress-free BYOB and daylight still streaming in through the windows, plus the excited chatter from the nearby birthday table, combined to create an effortlessly optimistic atmosphere. There were many toasts and huzzahs, and effective ribbing of curry comrades who had failed to make the meeting.
Though forewarned that Anarkali offered elephantine naans, Trampy and The Tramp still opted for four of the breads – two peshwari, plus garlic and chili variations – along with four portions of rice. Attempting to fit all these sundries on the table, along with the main courses and rapidly increasing number of empty Tennent’s cans – if they are indeed “soldiers”, it was reminiscent of the interlude in 300 when the Spartans patch up their defences using the bodies of slain enemies – but with a Tetris-honed level of skill, everything was jostled into place. Tandoori fiend Ravi Peshwari – a man who definitely knows his curry – was quick to praise his dish. At the Tramps’ end of the table, the uncommon silence indicated that their chow was also hitting the spot. But the naans were indeed formidable, provoking a series of reactions comparable to witnessing enormous interstellar craft position themselves silently over the world’s capital cities: surprise, wonder and excitement quickly followed by fear. Would we be able to beat them?
With some considerable effort, the banquet was bested by the brotherhood, although Trampy uncharacteristically struggled to finish his chicken tikka main course, cooked in brandy. There was certainly no question of attempting to squeeze in any kind of dessert, so the gang merely settled in over the neverending conveyer belt of Tennent’s (The Gheezer had quietly slipped out in the lull between starters and mains to secure another slab of Tennent’s, and was doubly honoured by being permitted to take the remainder home for safekeeping until the next meeting). Our companion table of eight finished their meal at roughly the same time, at which point the lights were extinguished and the waiting staff paraded in a birthday cake for the lucky youngster. The sweet barbership-inspired baritones of TATTGOC bolstered the inevitable “Happy Birthday” singalong, and this fraternal enthusiasm was rewarded with a multiple slices of chocolate sponge cake.Tradition dictates that the brotherhood go for a nightcap after their tea, but the opportunity to linger in Anarkali while the last rays of sun receded was too tempting. Lime Pickle had to leg it to get the train back east, but everyone else lounged, chatted and quaffed. The bill, when Trampy was finally able to retrieve it, was very reasonable, even after chalking up an additional £40 quid or so for the Tennent's carry-outs. And to see a young man reaching such a landmark birthday added a certain unexpected poignancy to proceedings. For all the boisterous, untamed, in-the-raw, sheer goddamn viking masculinity on display at your average TATTGOC meeting, a noble strain of sentimentality cries manly tears just below the surface.
So to witness a youngling cross the rubicon and become a man felt like a true honour ... nay, a privilege. And one day hence, when this same cider-consuming sapling feels stymied by some unalterable facet of his life – perhaps a rushed, now-loveless marriage, the sense-dulling daily grind of monitoring data entry or the belated realisation that he has left barely a scratch on the eternal mirror of human experience – maybe he will recall that fateful night in Anarkali and finally feel ready to proceed to the next stage of manhood: by establishing his very own Curry Club. Until that day ...
Range Of Drinks: BYOB's yer uncle – with no corkage. Result!
Highlights: The aforementioned BYOB policy, authentic-tasting food, generously-proportioned naans – for some vocal members, this was the best TATTGOC taste experience to date.
Lowlights: The bill did seem to take an ice age to arrive, but that was possibly due to Trampy’s timid demeanour, reminiscent of Cadet Laverne Hooks, from Police Academy, before she starts yelling “DON’T MOVE, DIRTBAG!”
The Verdict: A surprisingly sensuous southside experience!
The Damage: £113.40 (tip: £16.60)
Them's The Brakes
Everyone loves Top Gear, right? I mean, if you don't like Top Gear then everyone knows you're either a woman or some kind of big jessie (in other words, about as useful as a woman). So there has been literally no point in claiming that you don't like Top Gear, ever since Jeremy Clarkson methodically recon/deconstructed the programme in his own tight-jeaned, loosely-jowled, fossil-fuelled, Partridge-esque image.
That said, they do the odd funny bit on the show. And on Sunday they staged their own little petrolhead pageant, promising to reveal the identity of notorious speed freak The Stig. And it turned out to be Michael Schumacher! You know, the German Formula One driver who helped the Ferrari mannschaft totally dominate for ages! But what could this possibly have to do with curry? If you can't be bothered watching the whole interview on YouTube, just check this little snippet out:
It was, of course, Clarkson who first mentioned curry in a disparaging manner, so that specially-created clip above was the seven-time F1 champion throwing the initial jibe right back into Jezza's smug coupon (or "grill" as it might appropriately be called in this instance).
Is there any more substance to this whimsical Monday morning post? Well, there are two things to note. First of all, it gave me an alarming amount of pleasure to hastily edit together such a shonky video using iMovie HD in the knowledge that almost half of the official TATTGOC brotherhood work in commercial TV production, so each clunky fade between static images – not to mention the soundtrack that just jarringly stops rather than subtly fading out – will feel like an icy dagger straight into their professional hearts.
Also: Clarkson seems foolishly confident that curry has no place in the modern FIA set-up ... to which I saw "fie!" (and, perhaps, "foe!"). I'm sure there must be plenty of curry-related Formula One legends he hasn't even thought of, starting with ... Miki Hakkinaan. And who could forget Jamun Hill? Or the big wee man himself, Burn-y Ecclestone? Surely there must be others I haven't thought of ...
Currypedia No. 4: The Tandoor
It’s Thursday and that can only mean another exciting update from your favourite curryspondents. What do we have this week? Yes, it’s finally back … after a long absence the time has come to once again idly thumb through Trampy and The Tramp’s Currypedia and expand our minds with a blast of curry-related facts. Having begun our educational odyssey munching through the poppadom before wolfing down some pakora and potatoes it seems like the right time to progress further into the Indian meal – and what better way to bridge the gap between the starters and the main course than to look into an essential piece of equipment for any Indian kitchen … The Tandoor.
The basic design of the Tandoor has remained the same for over 2000 years and it has been used in some form from Egypt and Iran, up through Turkey and Afghanistan and across Central Asia. The Tandoor is best known in the UK as an integral part of Indian cuisine – no self-respecting Indian restaurant or takeaway could be without one. But what exactly is it?
The Tandoor is a cylindrical clay oven, open at the top, traditionally heated with burning coals or wood placed at the bottom – although most modern restaurants will us electric or gas-fired ovens which are more easily controlled and cleaner for use indoors. The oven is lit several hours before cooking and kept stoked to maintain very high internal temperatures upwards of 350 C (even up to 480 C). Food is then cooked by being placed in the oven – meat (marinated chicken, lamb and kebabs typically) being placed on long skewers which are slid vertically down into the chamber, while breads such as naan are stuck to the inside wall to cook. Any sauces or gravies are prepared separately and should typically be served separately from the dry meat. The adjective "Tandoori" describes any food cooked cooked in the Tandoor.
As always, I like to hear what Glasgow’s very own curry guru Ali Aslam of The Shish Mahal has to say about our topic: “The Shish Mahal has two of these ovens, which require a great deal of skill and experience to use. The nature of the Tandoor contributes largely to the flavour of the food cooked in it, and it is virtually impossible to reproduce this effect in the home, but you can approach it very nearly either by using a charcoal-fired barbeque, or by cooking under a very hot grill, and turning the food frequently.” In this case Ali is only partially correct – he’s overlooked the lengths which some curry enthusiasts will go to to recreate that authentic taste at home …
Originally today’s post was meant to be the next instalment of the also scandalously Missing In Action section The Tramp’s Jukebox Puri … that is until I stumbled across two fascinating sites which both have a touch of the TATTGOC to them. First up we have The Tandoor Site – Outdoor Cooking The Indian Way. Created by Tandoor aficionado Piers Thompson (pictured with his half-built Tandoor) the site follows Thompson's project to build his very own Tandoor oven in his back garden and includes full step-by-step instructions on the building process. If that’s not enough, there are also tales of his trial-and-error escapades in attempting to recreate Tandoori dishes in the oven once it was completed. A true curry hero, Piers surely commands the respect of Trampy and The Tramp and the whole of the TATTGOC brotherhood.
Then, as if Piers’ site wasn’t enough, tucked away in his FAQ page I found a link to another, slightly more TATTGOC-reminiscent DIY Tandoor page. The snappily-titled Welcome To The Step By Step Guide To Building Your Own Tandoor is akin to what Mr T would have knocked up had The A-Team been locked in a shed while craving some Tandoori Lamb and couple of peshwari naan. This gem of a site teaches you how to create your own Tandoor using, I kid you not: An oil drum, cement, sand, fire cement or clay, a hinge, some wheels and some paint. Not only did this guy build his own Tandoor from scratch – he put it on wheels and painted flames up the side. Badass.
So there we have it – no Jukebox Puri this week but now we have the knowledge to create our very own TATTGOC Tandoor… on wheels. Move over MacGyver, Trampy and The Tramp are in town – and they’re driving a Tandoor. So, should TATTGOC get a summer project underway and start building our own?
Eats, Hoots And Leafs
A wise sage once said "happy the man who is paid for his hobby". And for TATTGOC's resident man-of-letters Trampy, there are occasional, glorious occasions when he can combine his crippling weakness for overwrought punnery with his overwhelming desire for spicy curry by reviewing restaurants in a professional capacity for newspapers, magazines and other so-called "old media". Recently, Trampy received a commission to pass summary judgement on the newly-opened Curry Leaf on Byres Road, just the latest Glasgow venue to leap upon the runaway bandwagon of Lilliputian curry servings. With his faithful TATTGOC teammate and defacto legal counsel Rumpole Of The Balti in tow, Trampy set off to the Wild Wild West End to get the skinny. How did it all go down? Here we can present an exclusive extract from his official report:Perhaps it was the exotic spices reacting with the coriander mojitos, but after my meal at The Curry Leaf, I had the most fevered dream. I was William Holden in Sunset Boulevard, interrogating faded movie star Gloria Swanson who, inexplicably, looked like a chicken tikka chasni. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. “You used to be big,” I exclaimed. Swanson bristled beneath her delicious-looking exterior: “I am big. It’s the dishes that got small.” What the blazes did it all mean?
It meant, of course, that my subconscious had clocked an emerging Glasgow culinary trend. What began as a small wave of Indian restaurants offering tapas-style menus has recently turned into a tangy flood ...
See? Useful information presented in an entertaining fashion. That's service journalism, right there. But how does it all end? The full review has been archived for posterity at The Herald website, and if you'd like to examine the tapas-style menu for yourself, The Curry Leaf itself is online too. Could it be a future official TATTGOC destination? Your correspondent fears that two rounds of coriander mojitos for the whole crew would send the final bill into the stratosphere. But he has nevertheless vowed to return to The Curry Leaf someday to sample their off-peak thali selection.
(And yes, it has been a slow week. Don't worry – it's Jukebox Puri next Thursday.)
From Our Foreign Curryspondent ... Dateline: Japan!
Your Foreign Curryspondent: Makhni Knife (pictured above, far left)
The Pub Aforehand: Sturgis, a small Kanazawa bar run by a lone Japanese rock enthusiast and leather fetishist.
In Attendance: Makhni Knife, Karahi … CHOP!!!, The Korma Chameleon, Poppadom Preach, Fear Of The Daal, Chappati Hearst, and assorted, unnamed also-rans.
Décor: A futuristic suite of white and clear glass, like the cover of Radiohead’s OK Computer album, with added elephant motifs.
Expectations: Five storeys high – given Japan’s relative absence of curry houses, and woefully unspicy native cuisine, this was a rare opportunity to wake the sleeping weegie dragons in our mouths, albeit within the sterile confines of the restaurant level inside a Japanese shopping mall.
The Experience:
It is hardly good manners for a foreign curryspondent to malign his hosts, but it must be reported that the Japanese talk a lot of shit. Chief among their nonsenses is the common belief that Japanese intestines are one or two feet longer than ours in the West, thus allowing them to process food with greater nuance, subtlety and Zen-like patience. Even if this were true, it appears that they must take the rough with the smooth, genetically-speaking. Their samurai digestive systems deal with chilli powders and peppers about as well as they hold up to alcohol – which is to say, like a nation of feudal gaylords. Our foreign tongues being armour-plated by comparison, we boarded the elevator up to Sharma with the same conquering spirit that Admiral Perry’s black ships once sailed into Tokyo bay.
Everyone else was rendered effectively irrelevant, and their subsequent conversations were surely too trivial to be recorded here. At the business end of the table, meanwhile, internationalism began to flourish, as Poppadom Preach impressively but unnecessarily read the menu in Hindi, having learned it at her posh London all-girl secondary school, which used to send its brightest, flightiest fillies on exchange programmes to the Shev Shena terrorist training camp in the mountains north of Maharashtra.
The rest of us relied on our imperfect English, potted Japanese, and helpful pictures of the dishes, complete with little cartoon chillies to indicate the spice level of each. The scale went up to five, but even the hottest items – kebab vindaloo, for example – registered no higher than four. The option was available, however, to pay a little extra and “crank it up a notch”, as The Tramp would undoubtedly shriek. Without hesitation, Karahi … CHOP!!! turbocharged his chicken dopiaza by a factor of one, while Makhni Knife doubled down on the unacceptably mild 2-chilli rating of his chicken massala, drawing an audible gasp from the waitress, unable to contain her fear or lust.
The staff, incidentally, were 100% Japanese, including the chefs who worked in plain sight behind a glass screen (although they did seem pretty cheerful – see photograph). Unlike Glasgow, with its prodigious population of South Asian immigrants, Japan feels more comfortable eating foreign food if it is not actually served or prepared by foreigners. What you get instead is their own interpretation of Indian (or Mexican, or Italian), which in this case involves rice that is a little too sticky, portions that are less than generous, and quality mismatches between meat and sauce.Makhni Knife’s massala, for example, came in a gravy boat so small that he might well have poured it over his own head in protest, if public displays of anger were not considered a sure sign of weakness in this country. And while the sauce itself was decent, though still a bit too mild, the meat was so shredded as to suggest that this chicken had died pecking at a landmine, leaving very little of nourishing substance. Meanwhile, the other meals were arriving at infrequent intervals, which is no big deal in Japan, where everyone tends to share their orders.
Fear Of The Daal, pleased and honoured to have his opinion heard by the world’s foremost grassroots forum for curry appreciation, gave his mughal chicken a mixed review, calling it “tasty but extra-mild, even by Japanese standards”. Having both ordered the butter chicken, Poppadom Preach and The Korma Chameleon had less reason to be pleased, with nice-looking chunks of tikka meat floating in a red sea of Heinz tomato soup. In truth, only the sundries received unanimous approval, with the cheese naan such a delight that one member of our party kept a whole one entirely to herself, creating confusion, resentment, and recrimination over the vexed question of who had ordered what. (Makhni Knife, not known for his forgiving disposition, made a note of the offender in his black moleskin ledger, alongside a sequence of disproportionately extreme and vengeful doodles.)
Simply put, there were not enough of those deliciously melty badboys to go around, and so the meal was rounded out with a bitter taste, assuaged only slightly by two unfamiliar brands of beer – Nepal Ice, which was judged so “authentic” by Fear Of The Daal he thought it might have been brewed from the frozen tinkle of Sherpa Tenzing himself. Everest beer was even better, carrying a picture of Tenzing on the label, and promising to deliver “the timeless essence of Shangri-La”.
Unable to afford more than one or two rounds – even on special offer, Nepal Ice cost more than 500 yen, or £4 per bottle – we faced the customary shock of a Japanese restaurant bill with varying degrees of courage, then advanced into the city, for a ludicrous evening of video games (including a flight simulator which tested the skills of so-called airline pilot, Captain Karahi … CHOP!!!, and found him barely adequate), followed by a long night of karaoke, fuelled by smuggled cans of Chu-Hi Strong, the Japanese equivalent of the Buckie.
Soon, this rag-tag band of away support for TATTGOC began to spill their drinks, slip on the floor, misjudge their own singing voices, laugh loudly at nothing in particular, and misuse an oversized plastic Hello Kitty bowling skittle as a substitute guitar-cum-phallus during a god-awful rendition of Won’t Get Fooled Again. A new dawn rose in the Far East. The Buddha Himself seemed to smile, even as he covered his eyes, ears, and nose. Curry Club had come to Japan.
Range Of Drinks: Beers all round, mostly Nepalese (although bottles of Kingfisher were also available) and a few ¾ pints of slightly cheaper, blander Asahi on draft, served in lovely frosty mugs.
Highlights: The cheese naan was more than a match for any equivalent item on Glasgow’s curry house menus.
Lowlights: Chronically underpowered in the spice department, stingy with meat, inconsistent with sauce. Plus, the huge windows allowed passers-by to stare in like slack-jawed xenophobes – plans for a retaliatory display of pink pancakes were briefly considered, but reluctantly shelved for fear of immediate deportation.
Curry Club Solidarity Meeting Special Report ... Dateline: Glenrothes!
(The Tramp was uncharacteristically absent from the last Curry Club – what's up with that? Here's the scoop, straight from The Tramp's mouth ...)Dark times call for drastic and dangerous measures and so it was that I found myself scouring the streets of Glenrothes on the evening of May 21, hunting for a curry. This was the first time since the inaugural meeting of TATTGOC that Trampy and myself, the two founding fathers of our brotherhood, were not BOTH present to enjoy the warm, glowing, warming glow and boisterous banter of the world's foremost band of curry adventurers. Work commitments had conspired to strand me in Fife, surrounded by Frenchmen, and with nary a curry in sight … What would YOU do in that situation? How committed to the club would YOU be? There was nothing else for it: I resolved to stage my own one-man Curry Club meeting by plunging headlong into the unknown and seeking a curry from somewhere in The Kingdom Of Fife.
I wasn’t going to let finishing after 9pm hold me back so, with my curry senses tingling, I found myself strangely drawn to Leslie. A small satellite town of Glenrothes, Leslie initially seemed to be shut for the night until I stumbled across The Reya Tandoori (according to the website "the kind of indian restuarant [sic] that columbus was searching for") on the High Street. Upon entering The Reya I was hit by a powerful odour, although it did not at first seem like exotic spices. But with the little hand now past 10 there was no time to find another establishment – it would have to be here or nowhere …
Although claiming to be open until 11pm the waitress looked a little disappointed when I entered. Had she had perhaps forgotten to flip over the “open/closed” sign? In any case, she had to duck behind the scenes to confer with the chef: would he cook me up one of the house specialities? Yes, the waitress informed me, yes he would. With a Lamb Nentara (described in the menu as “selected pieces cooked with cashew nuts, yoghurt, mashed green chillies and almond powder”) ordered up, and a half pint of Tiger to sip while I waited, a bit of banter with the waitress revealed that they'd been thinking of closing up shop and scarpering, so I had ruined their early night. C'est la vie, as they say in France.
Jumping into my trusty steed The White Bullet, I was back at my hotel in no time and ready to tune into the spiritual vibe being transmitted by the official Curry Clubbers back at Casa Del Bulldoza et TBW. A few muddled text messages had come through from the A-team and a quick call to an already pretty boozy Trampy confirmed that the first meeting without me was already a roaring success. Then I heard that, emboldened by his temporary rise to power in my absence, The Bulldosa was attempting to turn the tables and have me barred.
Thoroughly depressed with this news I sat myself down on the edge of my bed and tucked into a predictably average curry. The peshwari naan wasn’t half bad though. As disappointing as my one-man Curry Club was it does mean that another restaurant can be ticked off the list. And at least I didn’t lose all my possessions in the process (I’m looking at you, Rabbie Shankar …)