... After mulling for a while we drove to Tamarind, a fairly new Indian restaurant in the Downend area of Bristol. There is no parking at the front of the restaurant but at the rear there is a large car park attached to the Somerfield supermarket, but I've got something to tell you about that ... Read review
Perched atop a 100 foot cliff with a beautiful view of the Caribbean Sea, the Tamarind ... more
Tree Hotel is ideally located in the center of Dominica's west coast. Dominica is a small Caribean island that is largely rural, uncrowded and unspoiled. Offering a lush mountainous interior of rainforests, waterfalls, lakes, hot springs and more than 200 rivers, the island touts itself as a ''non tourist destination'' for divers, hikers and naturalists. Both the Macoucherie beach and the Salisbury beach, home of the East Carib Dive Center, are within walking distance of the hotel. Roseau, the capital, is a 12 mile drive, while the Melville Hall Airport is about an hour by car. The hotel features 12 double rooms, each with a common porch offering ocean views, direct dial telephone, refrigerator, and ceiling fan. The hotel also offers a pool and small playground. The hotel's restaurant features local creole dishes and Kubuli Draft, the island's locally brewed beer.
Information: :Price is per double room per night and may vary depending on date booked...
Perched atop a 100 foot cliff with a beautiful view of the Caribbean Sea, the Tamarind ... more
Tree Hotel is ideally located in the center of Dominica's west coast. Dominica is a small Caribean island that is largely rural, uncrowded and unspoiled. Offering a lush mountainous interior of rainforests, waterfalls, lakes, hot springs and more than 200 rivers, the island touts itself as a ''non tourist destination'' for divers, hikers and naturalists. Both the Macoucherie beach and the Salisbury beach, home of the East Carib Dive Center, are within walking distance of the hotel. Roseau, the capital, is a 12 mile drive, while the Melville Hall Airport is about an hour by car. The hotel features 12 double rooms, each with a common porch offering ocean views, direct dial telephone, refrigerator, and ceiling fan. The hotel also offers a pool and small playground. The hotel's restaurant features local creole dishes and Kubuli Draft, the island's locally brewed beer.
Information: :Price is per double room per night and may vary depending on date booked...
NH Hotels, the hotel chain leader in Europe, with more than 300 hotels in 20 countries in Europe, Latin America and Africa. Enter into our web site and find the best available tariff at all times
Advantages: Excellent service and food Disadvantages: The parking!
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Not in Tamarind will you find dark rooms, red light bulbs and those little booths. Tamarind is open, bright and very cheerful. The whole restaurant is in colours of white, cream and green, not entirely cosy, but not stark either. There is, of course, the obligatory pictures of Indian landmarks.
You are escorted to your table by the very polite waiter who takes away your coats and leaves you to ponder the menus. The drinks menu ... ...little bitter chocolate with the Tamarind logo on it, its little things like this that make a restaurant just that bit special!
I cant complain about the service, it was fabulous, and we would definitely return at some point. However, we wouldn't drive there again, and this is the little story I would tell you, it also demonstrates how excellent the staff are.
We returned to the car park to see 2 people stood next to ... more
After a week of stresses and strains the grandparents whisked the children away so me and Alan had a chance for a lovely dinner out. After mulling for a while we drove to Tamarind, a fairly new Indian restaurant in the Downend area of Bristol. There is no parking at the front of the restaurant but at the rear there is a large car park attached to the Somerfield supermarket, but I've got something to tell you about that later! I'd also had a leaflet dropped through my door detailing the lots of delicious sounding dishes.
Not in Tamarind will you find dark rooms, red light bulbs and those little booths. Tamarind is open, bright and very cheerful. The whole restaurant is in colours of white, cream and green, not entirely cosy, but not stark either. There is, of course, the obligatory pictures of Indian landmarks. You are escorted to your table by the very polite waiter who takes away your coats and leaves you to ponder the menus. The drinks menu was quite large with a good selection of red and white wines, spirits, soft drinks, beers and lager, including some Indian lagers. Being the boring people we are, we ended up with a blackcurrant and lemonade and an orange juice and lemonade.
Then we started on the gargantuan ordeal of looking through the menu, and one has to say, you're spoilt for choice! To give you some ideas, here is the number of dishes available: Starters: 21 Chef Specialities: 21 Tandoori Dishes: 9 Balti Dishes: 5 Mild Dishes: 6 Medium Dishes: 12 Hot Dishes: 6 Vegetarian Dishes: 6 Seafood Dishes; 14 Biriani Dishes: 8 Vegetable Side Dishes: 15 Sundries (Nan, rice, etc): 19
And 4 types of omelettes for those of you not wishing to 'step outside the box'! So, as you can see, you have 87 main dishes that you can choose from! Thankfully the majority of the dishes have a description of the dish underneath them including the spiciness of the dish. Dividing it into the different section also made it easier to choose, at least it saved me from having to eat my way through a vindaloo after accidentally ordering it and being too embarrassed to order anything else!
The first hurdle was in choosing the starter, there was the usual Prawn Cocktail (!), Onion Bhaji, Somosa's, Chicken/Lamb Tikka and tandoori chicken, but some more original stuff is in there ranging from £2.75 right up to £5.95.
In the end Alan had Chicken Kufat (£3.75) and I had Lamb Chops (£4.95), exciting I know, perhaps I was a big nervous to 'step outside the box'! Whilst we were waiting for them to arrive we munched on the obligatory Papadoms(60p) and Chutney tray(60p), for those who don't know papadoms are like giant crisps. Almost like a portion of 'chips and dips' really! The chutney tray consisted of raitia(cucumber and mint), not my favourite thing, but this was quite mild. A hot dip which was definitely hot, but teamed with the raita was quite bearable. Some red grains with coriander in it, it was nice but I have absolutely no idea what it was, perhaps someone could enlighten me? Oh, and the most delicious mango chutney I have ever tried, this alone made the pennies worth it!
Anyway, my starters have arrived! Alan's Chicken Kufta is tender chicken, moulded into burger shapes, fried in ghee with coriander, herbs and spices. So they're chicken burgers right? McChicken sandwich and all that? Wrong! That doesn't do them justice at all! They are about 3 times the size of a McChicken burger to start with and much thinner, the chicken is shredded rather than minced to an absolute pulp, the herbs and spices are a delicate accompaniment rather than over powering the chicken. It also came with a generous side salad.
As did my Lamb Chops, chops, marinated in yoghurt, with herbs and spices then barbecued. Well, I was expecting those little lamb chops you see so often in Asda, boy was I wrong! They were enormous, more like the chump steaks you can buy, Again they were delicately spiced, but the meat tasted like it had been roasting for ages but was still nice and pink inside. The waiter must have thought I was a starving hobo the way I snarled at him whilst sucking the bones every time he approached the table to take away the plates.!
Then we had the main course, which came about 10 minutes after we had finished the Starter. Really, its going to be difficult to list everything, but I'll pick a couple of the most appealing sounding dishes.
Samba Chicken - Cooked in a sweet and sour coconut sauce.
Modhu Puri Chicken - Chicken marinated and grilled, then cooked in a sweet sauce with onion, tomatoes, special spices.
Pasanda Lamb/Chicken - Cooked in fresh cultured yoghurt, mixed with nuts and flavoured red wine.
And I could go on and on and on!
In the end, in a struggle between Butter Chicken(£7.50) and Afghan Chicken(£6.25), and for a change the Afghans won! Alan had no such problem and when straight for the Karahi Chicken(£6.50) Also ordered was Rice (£1.95), Sag Aloo(£2.95) and inevitably, the Nan bread (£1.75). And all it came, on a little tray. Sadly mine didn't get the little candle underneath, but Alan got his own little gas heater on top of which the waiter re-heated his meal in a little metal tray. Gawd, waffling so much I forgot to say what it was! Afghan Chicken is cooked with pineapple and sultanas in a creamy sauce. It was a lovely golden colour, it was mild and creamy, but still full of flavour. The chicken pieces were absolutely enormous, well cooked and very moist. The mixtures of flavour meant it was a fairly sweet sauce, but the worse for it. Happily would I eat it again. Alan's Karahi Chicken was again chunks of chicken cooked with chopped onions, sliced ginger, capsicum, tomatoes, fresh herbs and 'special' karahi sauce. This was a medium hot dish, and strangely had no sauce at all. The vegetables were large chunks, yet well cooked through. Although described as medium hot, it wasn't take the skin of your tongue hot!
How much can you say about rice? It cam, it was white and it was boiled! But, all the grains were separate, it was not stodgy and stuck together, it obviously hadn't been sat there for hours. Sag Aloo, for those who don't know, consists of spinach and potato, again quite a large portion, the potato were so well cooked they were just falling away, draped in a mass of spiced spinach, and delicious. The Nan bread was big, light and fluffy, just as it should be.
Did we really need desserts? Well no, but for pure research reasons I had to look, and it is fairly limited. Lots of sorbet, ice creams and Indian ice cream. Nothing that tempted either of us, so we both went for a 'floater' coffee, unfortunately no de-caff, but I decided to live a little! It was very good, fresh roasted filter coffee, with fresh cream on the top. An excellent way to top off a meal. When we asked for the bill, we even got a lovely little bitter chocolate with the Tamarind logo on it, its little things like this that make a restaurant just that bit special!
I cant complain about the service, it was fabulous, and we would definitely return at some point. However, we wouldn't drive there again, and this is the little story I would tell you, it also demonstrates how excellent the staff are.
We returned to the car park to see 2 people stood next to the car next to ours, we then realised there was something glinting underneath our car window. As we got closer we realised that it was in fact our car window!! The couple next to us (a bloke and his mum), had had a worse time. Both front windows had been smashed in and then the door ripped open and the panel ripped off, as his car was only worth £200, it was therefore a write off! And what did they take? Absolutely nothing, a car with a cheque book, passport and tools in it and they took nothing. Turning back to our car they had put a breeze block through the window, unfortunately on their first attempt they missed and put it into the side of the car! Again the glove box was rifled through but nothing taken. Hence an evening taken up till 12.30 at night getting the RAC to put a new window in. The meal that had cost £41 ended up costing £91 after Alan had paid the excess. The Tamarind staff very kindly allowed us to use their phone to call the RAC, and then didn't mind when I had to use it a further 2 times to get through to the right department! They were very apologetic, and couldn't have been more helpful.
We have since found out that that car park can be an evening home for up to a 100 kids from the local area, who delight in breaking windows and terrorising the local residents and the shop workers from Somerfield. Of course the police wouldn't come out, and the supermarket confirmed that there were no cameras in the car park, which is owned by South Glos council, despite the store asking for them as they were scared for the safety of their staff! Also unfortunately for us the local beat Bobby, who had been taken off the beat because it was deemed that there wasn't a need for him was reinstated the next night!
So the moral of the story is, if visiting Downend remember to take a tank with you or electrify your car!
