Cafe Darna, St George's Road

The Time: March 22, 8.30pm 

The Pub Aforehand: Canarvan, St George’s Road

In Attendance: Trampy, The Tramp, Rogan Josh Homme, Ravi Peshwari, Bob Balti, Rabbie Shankar, The Duke, Chasni Hawkes. 

Decor: Sumptuous red on the walls, big couches in the waiting area, a large open kitchen and many, many mirrors.

Expectations: Café Darna was an entirely unknown quantity but since the previous restaurant on the site failed, no-one imagined it would be a belter.

The Experience:

February’s paradigm-smashing, women-friendly TATTGOC meet-up succeeded in all sorts of ways. Perhaps most effectively, it compressed the entire philosophy, art and literature of Curry Club into one intense night, creating an evening so mindblowing that the ladies in attendance intuitively grasped the past, present and possible future of TATTGOC, without actually feeling the tug to attend another meet-up anytime soon, or perhaps ever. That, in essence, is the TATTGOC effect. Perhaps those burdened with XY chromosomes will never achieve such a complete understanding, or maybe they just glean some enjoyment from the simplest tasks of repetition: drinking Tennent’s, chomping pakora and patiently waiting for someone else to work out the rice/naan equation. In any case, Curry Club’s March appointment was of a very different stripe.


(Click here to read on ...)

If you haven't twigged by now, while TATTGOC purports to be an award-winning foodie blog – and has the curry-loving pennants to prove it – over the last three-and-half years it has feature-crept into a fascinating ongoing experiment: trying to create a unified theory of the Tramps' many-if-not-exactly-varied interests. So as well as sizeable amount of chat about curry (with more available in the recent episode of TATTGOC's Keep Calm And Curry On podcast), there are also references to hard rock music, action cinema, comicbooks, mixed martial arts, burritos ... even whisky.

One area that has only been glanced upon so far by your burly hosts is the magical world of videogames. But fear not – that day has arrived along with the belated discovery of the trailer for Velayudham, a Tamil "masala-movie" that combines comedy, action, musical numbers and a lot of cosplaying as the main dude from the best-selling videogame franchise – and TATTGOC favourite – Assassin's Creed ...




(Watch the trailer, and witness the Tramps bicker about it by clicking here:)

We're always looking for listener feedback about Keep Calm And Curry On – the planet's only curry podcast – and as you might expect, some of the same comments always come up. Stuff like: "It felt like it could have gone on forever!"; "Which one of you has the appealingly feminine voice?" And, in particular, "Is there any way it could be shorter?" Die-hard fans will be pleased to hear that we've managed to shave a few precious minutes off KCACO's running time, possibly after the belated realisation that if you want your podcast to eventually be listed on iTunes, it's probably not a fantastic idea to include entire music tracks. But never mind that, check out this fantastic spread enjoyed by Mumbai Me A Pony during a recent tour of Brighton ...
 

That impressive mixed grill looks like it could be a little deer! (An observation that will become hilarious once you've listened to The Tramp's full review of The Chilli Pickle on the podcast.) Also in episode six, there's a round-up of some recent curryhouse openings in Glasgow and the Tramps debate the pros and cons of having a curry for lunch if you're wooing new clients. And two genuine musical legends collaborate in the latest edition of The Tramp's Jukebox Puri. It's all there, stuffed into the Mixcloud player below ...


(Click here for more listening options and the show notes ...)

Our highest new entry this week comes from the lovely Salma Agha who's stormed into the KCACO chart with this deep slice of dubbed-out disco, straight from the early 80s ...


Dutch sitar spaceman Okko Bekker continues his ascent up the charts with this rocking eastern riff on Hendrix – you can almost hear the horns in the background ...



Things can only get Bekker as the spaceman is back with a second entry in the top five, a cosmically soothing ode to the destroyer himself (or herself, according to Trampy): Shiva!


It's The Podcast That's Hotta Than A Dried Bhut Jolokia (Episode 5 feat. Tikka MaBaws)
TATTGOC Sexytime! In Other Words, It's The First Podcast Of 2012
TATTGOC's New Year *Revolutions* For 2012
Spice Fillers: The Best Of TATTGOC 2011
Pod Cast Ye Merry Gentlemen ... It's Your Special Festive Episode Of Keep Calm And Curry On!
Jingle Is Massive! It's TATTGOC's Curr-istmas Gift Guide 2011 ...
The TATTGOC Podcast Returns! And For Some Reason It's Still Not Called "CHATGOC!!
That Curry Capital 2011 Result In Full ...
Keep Calm And Curry On ... It's The TATTGOC Podcast!! 

Detecting food trends is an art. Or maybe a science. In any case, one must be attuned to the rhythms of the street, parsing the shifting moods of both restaurateurs and diners. And in a fractured foodie world of pop-ins, pop-outs and pop-ups, it can sometimes seem harder than ever to discern a pattern or plan behind the swirling raw data. A good rule of thumb is: one instance of something could be an anomaly, two might be a fluke but three ... well, three's a goddamn trend. If it's good enough for mainstream features journalism, it's good enough for us! So when news reached TATTGOC Towers of not one but two new tiffin-based ventures in Glasgow, it was time to start looking for a third. And wouldn't you know, we found it inside ourselves. But first, here's what kicked the whole thing off ...


It was fellow food blog Pie In Soup who tipped us off to this one. Apparently the Babu Bombay Street Kitchen has been spicing up farmer's markets in Queen's Park and Partick for many months now, and they also run a city centre tiffin lunchtime delivery service, very much in the manner of the legendary dabbawallas of Mumbai. Necessarily, the classic stackable metal tiffin is substituted for three plastic portion pots, from a rotating menu of delicious-sounding chicken and vegetable curries. All you have to do is blast 'em in the office microwave. This week's options included a rich chicken bhuna and a hot and spicy achari gobi, with the option of extra sundries on the side. Signing up to the mailing list gets you regular menu updates and all the necessary details of ordering. (You can also follw them on Twitter.) In fact, it sounds so delicious and charming, the Tramps are considering taking up a city centre short-term office position in the near future simply to justify trying Babu Bombay out: we'll call it Tempin' With The Tramps. But wait ... there's more!

(Click here to keep reading ...)