Tandoori Oven, 20 Mar 2007

This is the first of the food kiosks to the north of the market. Quite a wide menu, with all the dishes on view in a chiller cabinet - your choice is served onto rice and zapped in a microwave.

I went for the Chicken Tandoori, curry sauce and rice for £3.50, with additional naan bread for 90p. For that I got a large plate of rice, 5-6 decent sized chunks of deep red coloured chicken and a bit of the sauce. The naan bread was warmed up for me, but, because it was brass monkeys out there, the bread soon became cold again! The chicken was a touch dry, but there was a nice tandoori flavour - although it had obviously not been anywhere near a tandoori oven, merely marinated in an artificial tandoori sauce to give the colour. The curry sauce was a bit non-descript, but worked as a good gravy.

My dining companions had a couple of onion bhajis instead of the naan. They seemed a bit old - chewy and a bit stodgy; also a couple as a side dish, given the amount of rice you get, is a bit much, so, if you want a bhaji, I recommend you share. One of my companions had half tandoori and half lamb curry. Now in terms of value for money, this must be the one. He got about four chunks of tandoori chicken, and quite a large amount of lamb curry. However, "It did not rock my boat" was his comment, and in fact it was cold in the middle - probably due to the sheer volume that had to be zapped!

This sounds critical, and, to be fair, it wasn't perfect. But on one level it did hit the spot. IN terms of value for money, you can't knock it. That said, for a curry at a good price, I think the Thai Hut wins over the Tandoori.