Curried cuisine with extra special spice

Tired of the same old Indian fare?

Alison Davison would like to lead you in the direction of a Bangladeshi restaurant which offers a fresh take on hot dishes.

Wolverhampton, you lucky old town. Forgive my ignorance in previously believing you a loser in the restaurant stakes; now I know better and will try to make reparation by shouting from the rooftops, or failing that, from these pages, of the gem sitting quietly in your town centre.

I feel very guilty that a letter recommending the Bilash Tandoori came my way nearly a year ago but I never got round to visiting it. Another Indian restaurant, thought I, nothing new there.

Shame on me. The food at the Bilash is not like any other Indian restaurant fare I’ve ever had - and it’s Bangladeshi anyway.

The owner/chef has just won the ‘Midlands curry chef of the year’ award and on September 8, will compete in the national competition (in Bournemouth of all places). I wish him masses of luck. He has such a missionary zeal about being a culinary ambassador for his country and opening people’s eyes to authentic Bangladeshi/Indian dishes that he deserves every success.

We arrived very early one quiet Friday night. The welcome was friendly and warm and the decor a powerfully blue Anglo-Indian mix of ornate dado rails, floral china and golden elephants.

The paucity of diners was put down to the date - Friday 13 - often a quiet time, apparently, but the superstitious stay-at-homes were most unlucky in missing out on a meal here.

There were many familiar dishes on the menu, but also many unfamiliar ones, which made my spirits rise. they were obviously brave enough to proffer beyond-the-expected fare and also confident enough to have a large window looking into the kitchen. Not many “Indian” (I use the term for its familiarity although well aware it isn’t too accurate here) eateries do that - something which has encouraged me to suspect that in some establishments, the same pot of sauce is used for a mass of “different” dishes.

I don’t often fancy Indian restaurant food - too often, it’s been a lightly-coloured, gloopy concoction which has lived with me for at least a day afterwards, leaving its powerful aroma on my skin and hair.

But here there were indications of better things to come when our poppadums arrived.

These came with the usual accompaniments - but they were far from usual in their excellence. The chopped onion was scattered with fresh coriander, which improved it enormously; the raita was not a bright green slop, but fresh and actually tasting of yoghurt; and the home-made mango chutney was simply the best I’d ever tasted, with huge chunks of fruit in a jammy sauce.

(I praised it so much to the owner’s son that he presented me with a container of it to take home at the end of our meal. He also insisted that we have a liqueur on the house because we’d travelled a fair distance to dine there. He had no idea I was there to review the restaurant but was simply very charming and kind.)

As the other waiters prowled like tigers in their unaccustomed idleness, we had a lot of attention from him and very welcome it was too, as he advised us on our choices and explained the restaurant’s high standards.

I would normally order a selection of side vegetables, such as sag aloo and channa dhal, for my main course, but here there were also four vegetarian options - stuffed spinach, shahi paneer, subz-e-caldine and niramish. I’d never heard of the last two but following advice decided to have a small portion of niramish to start and the subz-e-caldine as my main course.

The staff will advise you to have a starter to help you cope with the wait as everything is cooked to order. After seeing a frightening amount of flame in the kitchen, they duly arrived.

The smell alone of the niramish was heavenly. Aubergine, potato, okra and chilli fried in olive oil (and allegedly very little of it), fragrant with spice. It was fairly hot (ferociously so in one eye-watering part) but delicious, the vegetables cooked just to the right level of softness. It was a revelation, with a freshness and lightness I would never have expected.

Olive or sunflower oil is used in preference to heavy ghee and the food is certainly lighter for it. They also avoid slopping too much sauce over everything.

My partner had been advised to choose a deceptively simple chicken chaat (£3.90) for his starter. This, too, was a revelation.

Chicken is prepared in a tandoor then diced and added to a tasty sauce incorporating predominantly tamarind, coriander and a handful of other background spices. It is wrapped in a crispy-fried paratha to produce a substantial and more than adequate time filler.

But if this was exciting, the main courses reached a different level altogether.

My partner chose one of the dishes that won the chef his latest award - a Goan tiger prawn massala (£13.90). It was exquisite - three immense prawns, marinated in herbs and a specially prepared spicy tomato paste, then cooked with garam masala, cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, green chillies, roasted onions and fresh coriander.

The result was a finely-balanced concoction which retained the delicate character of the fish, but packed in complicated and intensely evocative flavours.

The aroma of enticing spices was sensationally alluring, but the taste which followed carried the experience even further, with wonderfully exotic nuances that lingered on and on. (The family also runs an import business bringing in authentic sub-continent items, such as fresh tiger prawns and the spices, which they blend to their own exacting specifications.)

The subz-e-caldine (a Goan vegetable stir-fry, £5.90) was even better than my starter; more vegetables again, including potato, green chillies, green pepper and fresh coriander, but with a quite distinct spicing and coconut giving it a more substantial weight and creaminess.

I’d decided to have a peshwari nan (£1.90, with a sweetish filling of cashew and pistachio) which was fine but by far the best accompaniment was the excellent rice (£1.90 a portion), steamed to light, fragrant perfection (no sticky lumps here) with saffron and cardamom. It is powerfully aromatic in its own right, but manages to enrich all the other flavours too.

There was no chance of tackling a pudding after all this and, to be honest, the dessert options don’t seem to be in the same league.

But we didn’t feel we had missed out. On the contrary, we both delightedly felt we’d just had the finest subcontinent fare in the Midlands.