Cafe Salma, Charing Cross

The Time: January 20, 8.30pm

Booking Name: David Fincher

The Pub Aforehand: The “new” Arlington on Woodlands Road

In Attendance: Trampy, The Tramp, The Bulldosa, The Duke, Rogan Josh Homme, Ravi Peshwari, Sir Spicy Lover and The Gheezer

Décor: Upstairs, Cafe Salma is clean and cosy with an open kitchen taking up a fair bit of space – but head downstairs and you enter a subterranean Moroccon grotto, with comfy chairs, distinctive bric-a-brac and sumptuous drapes.

Expectations: Cafe Salma had come highly recommended by various notable curry lovers, notably the mighty Tam Cowan. Ravi Peshwari had also visited before and was looking forward to the prospect of a return visit with the massed Curry Club.

The Experience:

Is there such a thing ... as destiny? And if you seize it with both hands, can you alter its divine flightpath or are you merely sucked, helpless, into its adamant contrail? The creaky, clockwork turn of a new calendar year can nudge the minds of mortal men toward such imponderables. But it can also pop into your aching head if you find yourself nursing a pint of Guinness alone in a pub, with nothing to rest your gaze upon apart from a suspiciously new-looking sign proclaiming that here lies the last resting-stroke-hiding place of the Stone of Destiny. Such was the situation in which Trampy found himself, staring glazedly at a mid-sized rock while mentally summoning the last scraps of his verbal and physical dexterity, an attempt to reassert his habitual composure after a head-wrecking night on the sauce – and not the good sauce – in anticipation of the inaugural TATTGOC meet-up of 2011. Maybe they’re not coming, he thought. Maybe I could just go back to bed.

(Click to read on, and actually get to some curry ...)

Recently, TATTGOC has been putting a considerable amount of effort into sourcing free curry-related products. For who better to be a spicy focus group than the Curry Lovers Of The Year 2010? That's the thinking behind Tastin' With The Tramps, a taste test with a difference in that ... in that ... actually, it's pretty much what you would expect from a standard taste test. So what's on the menu this time? It's Mr Singh's Hot Punjabi Chilli Sauce.




What did the Tramps make of it? Check it out, "after the jump", as they say.

Each member of TATTGOC brings a different flavour to the Mumbai mix. Trampy juggles puns. The Tramp has a formidable logistical mind. And The Bulldosa used to have access to a dartboard. Each month, these seemingly chaotic elements smash together to create the special spicy sauce that is undeniably TATTGOC. Sometimes it is smooth. Other times, it can be rather coarse. But it is always mighty tasty.

All of which brings us to Ravi Peshwari, veteran Curry Clubber and – if you'll excuse the slightly 1980s-sounding construction – "computer whizz". Perhaps inspired by TATTGOC's shoddily slapped-together New Year's resolutions, Ravi recently contacted the Tramps to suggest one way to get 2011 off to a cracking start would be to streamline TATTGOC's URL from the slightly clunky www.trampyandthetramp.blogspot.com to something a bit catchier.

What was it? Click here to read on and find out ...

Hello! Or as the French say, informally: "Salut!" Or as the Tramps say: "Salute!"

That's right. After a giddy few months of being garlanded by various media outlets, TATTGOC thought it was time to give something back, by mounting an occasional series dedicated to acknowledging the spicy achievements of others (particularly those no longer around to participate in a curry-related Q&A). And who will be the first recipient of the soon-to-be-legendary Curry Club salute, instigated by oor ain Jalfrezi all those months ago in the aftermath of the "other" Shish Mahal? A certain Scottish gent named Thomas Leishman ...

Who was Thomas Leishman? Click to read more ...

Hogmanay may already be a rapidly fading memory – especially for those of us lucky enough to witness the Tangent DJ tag-team reforming for the first time in yonks at a nondescript venue tucked away in deepest Scotstoun. But if you look inside your heart, there’s probably still the time and the inclination to come up with some optimistic guidelines for the 12 months ahead, a checklist of self-improvement that might eventually lead to some proper self-actualisation. So we've decided to do the same thing for TATTGOC and cook up five spicy resolutions for 2011 – but, just to keep things interesting, one of them is a total fake-out. The Tramps won't even try to make it happen. Can you guess which one?

Click here to read the five 2011 resolutions ...