Club 2000 - Mogo Chips & Beers

Club 2000 is a sports bar serving a wide range of Indian dishes, including East African Indian dishes, such as mogo (cassava). Decorations are an odd mix of Hindu art and sporting paraphernalia and the plasma TVs usually have on cricket or some other sports match. Despite this, it’s usually not dominated by men. It’s actually popular with Asian families. Whenever we dine there we are usually the only table of two with the other diners being large family groups, with the women often wearing beautiful saris.   

Being a bar, Club 2000 is heavy on the fried snacks. They do a range of bhajis - chilli, onions, methi (fenugreek leaves), paneer spring rolls and mogo with masala or garlic, or simply as chips.

Mogo (also known as cassava, manioc and tapioca) is on many Rayners Lane restaurant menus and is an excellent example of East African Indian cuisine. The Indian diaspora in Africa consists of approximately 1.5 million people of Indian origin living in Africa. Most arrived in the 19th century as British indentured labourers, many of them to work on the Kenya-Uganda railway, while others had arrived earlier by sea as traders. When the Indians migrated to Africa they brought their spices with them. They eventually started growing many of these spices in Africa and used the local ingredients with their spices. Mogo proved so popular with the Indian immigrants in Africa, that you now often see it on Indian menus around the world. Mogo is a starchy, tuberous root so great for making chips. I find it hard to resist mogo chips with a spicy tomato masala sauce.

Usually we have mogo and bhajis to start at Club 2000, but on our most recent visit we tried the chicken tikka. It was very good - juicy, lean chicken breast, nicely spiced and a generous portion.

Kasoori prawns are my favourite main at Club 2000. So on my most recent visit we had these with bhindi masala and vegetable biryani. Koosori methi is dried fenugreek leaves and tastes similar to a combination of celery and fennel with a slightly bitter bite. The kasoori prawns at Club 2000 are in a spicy tomato, garlic, chilli and ginger based gravy with dried fenugreek leaves. It's delicious. On our last visit the okra in the bhindi masala were over-cooked (some of them blackened) and the dish was a bit bitter. It was disappointing as it was so over-cooked, I don't think it should have been served.

The spinach biryani at Club 2000 is fantasitc and goes well with the prawn kasoori, but last time, to try something different I ordered the vegetable biryani, which was no where near as good. The spices in it tasted harsh and there weren't many vegetables in it besides peas. In contrast, whenever I've had their spinach biryani, it's been packed with spinach, carrot, peas and other vegetables. Next time I'll be sticking to the spinach biryani.

Club 2000's menu assumes diner's know Indian food well, so there are no descriptions on the menu. We've always found staff friendly and happy to answer any questions we had about dishes we are unfamiliar with. In recent visits we have found service terribly slow and on our most recent visit the food wasn't as good as it had been in the past. So it might be a little while before we visit Club 2000 again.

Address: 427-431 Rayners Lane, Pinner HA5 5ER

T: 020 8868 2500 W: www.club-2k.co.uk

* Note - Club 2000 is a members club. However, we’ve never been turned away. It just means they have us sign into their member’s book each time we go there. Once we asked why it’s a members club and were told it’s because they used to get loud, drunk people coming for a curry after too many drinks and ruining the atmosphere for other diners. The member’s club status stops this as they can refuse entry if people are too drunk

Annaluxmie - Coconuts & Seafood

Annaluxmie often looks quiet, which had wrongly led us to think it probably wasn't very good. We tried it for the first time recently and went back again five days later - it was that good!

Annaluxmie specialises in Sri Lankan, South Indian and Chettinadu foods, so dishes featuring seafood and coconut are the stars of their menu when it comes to the Sri Lankan and South Asian dishes, whereas Chettinad lends itself more to meat dishes.

Chettinad cuisine is from Tamil Nadu state in South India. It is one of the spiciest and the most aromatic in India and famous for its use of a variety of spices used in preparing mainly non-vegetarian food (chicken, lamb and fish; not pork and beef). The dishes are hot and pungent with fresh ground masalas, usually with generous amounts of peppercorn, cinnamon, bay leaves, cardamom, nutmeg, green and red chillies. The Chettiars, a merchant caste in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, migrated to nearby Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, leading to Chettinad cuisine becoming popular in Sri Lanka. The people of Chettinad speak Tamil. Today there is a dispora of Chettinad people who live in places such as the USA, Singapore, Malaysia and Rayners Lane.

To start we've tried Annaluxmie's devilled king prawns and the devilled squid. Devilled dishes are a staple of Sri Lankan cuisine. Here you can choose from devilled chicken, fish, prawns or squid, which essentially means stir fried with tomatoes, onions, peppers, chilli and ginger. Both the squid and prawns were delicious and packed a firey punch.

Next up we had the garlic fish curry, chunks of fish cooked in special South Indian spices, tamarind, garlic, shallot and tomato gravy. It was subtly spiced with nice tender chunks of fish and really tasty. We had it with coconut rice, which complimented if perfectly. The rice was made with fresh grated coconut and tasted fantastic.

Of the vegetarian dishes we have tried dahl makhani (rajma dhal, black dhal and channa dhal all mixed in garlic butter and garam masala) rich and delicious; and bhindi masala (okra cooked with Bombay onion, tomato, chilli and garlic), which was excellent and an ideal accompaniment to the seafood curries. The paneer palak (spinach puree and paneer cheese sautéed with onions, garlic, tomatoes and single cream) we found too creamy and a little sweet for our tastes and Indian chickpea staple of channa masala was very good. I tried a dish called ennai kathirikai for the first time here. The menu said this is fried aubergines with sesame and peanuts in gingerly-oil flavoured gravy, so obviously it was going to be a heavy dish, but still we did find it a bit too oily for our tastes. 

The masala dosa here is fantastic and so are the roti. We tried the chilli roti and it was packed with fresh green chillies.  

Annaluxmie is very reasonably priced. Both times we've eaten there we've had beers and eaten a feast and it's come to £20 a head, including tips. The service is very friendly and you can tell they really want you to enjoy the food and dinning with them. We'll be going back again soon to explore more of their menu.

Address: 436 Alexandra Avenue, Rayners Lane, Harrow, Middlesex, HA2 9TW
T: 020 8866 4960  W: www.annaluxmie.co.uk

Pink Turban - Bolly Bling

Having only been open for a couple of weeks, Pink Turban is the newest restaurant on the strip. The site had been bordered up for over a year and I'd been impatiently waiting for it to open. Oh, it was worth the wait - this place is super Bolly bling! They have spent a small fortune on the interior. It's bizarre to see something this flash on the Rayners Laee high street. I was recently at the new Cinnamon Soho restaurant and I'd say they'd spent 10 times what they spent on outfitting that restaurant. 

The restaurant is split over two levels; a stylish ground floor dinning area and the piano room downstairs, which is designed to wow. The chairs and tables in the piano room are stark white and the lighting is pink, there's a wall of bulbous disco lights (not on - perhaps for later in the night?) and a big white piano. Art work is specially commissioned Raj portraits on silver canvases. 

The menu is one of the strangest I have ever seen. Apparently they are in a soft opening phase that will last 3-4 months. At the end of this they will refine the menu, but for now they seem to be trialling everything they could imagine people might want. There's Indian boiled eggs with cheesey naan soldiers, sushi, wasabi prawns, £65 rock lobster and Indo-Chinese dishes alongside a full Indian menu. The couple on the table next to us were laughing about the £10,000 bottle of Chivas Regal on the drinks menu. Pink Turban is definitely punching above the normal casual Rayners Lane curry strip restaurant style.

We thought it would be safest to stick to the Indian options so ordered tandoori paneer and vegetable cutlets for our starters. The paneer was delicious - full of flavour from being marinated with a nice chilli kick. The cutlets were beautifully presented and served with a spanking fresh mint chutney.  The cutlets were a refined take on sabudana vada sago-potato dumplings, an Indian snack typically consumed in Maharashtra. The basic ingredients are sago and potato and these ones had a modern twist of dried apricots. They had a cloying texture so I found them quite heavy, but they tasted good.

For mains we had lamb rogan josh and a chickpea and okra dry curry with plain rice and garlic naan. I found both the lamb and vegetable dish heavy. But then rogan josh should be, so can't really fault them on that.

Rogan means "oil" in Persian, while josh means "heat, hot, boiling, or passionate". Rogan josh thus means cooked in oil at intense heat. Rogan josh is a dish from the Kashmir region of India, where it was introduced by the Mughals (hence the Persian in the dish name). Rogan josh should be a bright red colour and original rogan josh recipes would have Kashmiri red chillis (which are similar to paprika). Pink Turban’s rogan josh was indeed red. It was packed with tender lamb with the only vegetable being a little onion (as it should be), so it was nice to have the dry vegetable curry to complement it. I found the dry vegetable curry quite rich too, so I think they need to lay off the oil/ghee a bit.

Luckily we were in no hurry as our waitress was adorable, but still has a lot to learn. We had to ask for water three times. When asking the third time, she said, "Yes, sorry, you asked already. It's just all this," and gestured with an overwhelmed expression to the wine and cutlery. When asked what beer they have she said, "I don't know, I am new. That table (points to a big table on the other side of the room) ordered Peroni." We had some nice rose to enjoy as we waited, so it really didn't bother us. She was really sweet, constantly smiling and obviously trying hard to get to grips with things, in what is there soft opening phase, so we actually just found it amusing.

Pink Turban has me intrigued. I'm regretting not trying the Indian eggs with cheesey naan bread soldiers, so I'll definitely be going back again soon. I'll do another blog post after trying some of their more unusual dishes. Based on our experience I'd say go and check it out while they are still in the long soft opening phase. After that some of the stranger dishes might drop off the menu. If anyone tries the sushi let me know what it's like!

Oh, and it was good value. We had two glasses of a Argentinian malbec rose, followed by a bottle of Casillero del Diablo rose with all the food listed above and it came to £60.

Address: 439 Alexander Avenue, Rayners Lane, Harrow, HA2 9SE  T:  0208 8686888 
W: pinkturban.info

The Rayners Tandoori Restaurant

The Rayners is one of the oldest restaurants on the Rayners Lane curry strip and the first one I went to when I moved to the area five years ago. Back then we found it not spicy enough for our tastes and were put off by a strange water feature they had (think stagnant drain with water leaking into it). It underwent a refurb last year (removing the water feature) so we thought it was time we gave it another go.



Prawn Puree

The Rayers was established in 1987 and always seems busy on weekends. It's a tandoori restaurant so a tandoori dish to start was a must. We ordered the duck tikka (£4.95) and king prawn puree (£4.95). The duck was delicious, tender strips of breast meat, full of flavour and sizzling hot on the cast iron plate. The prawn puree had a generous amount of juicy prawns in a nice tomato and onion sauce and was served on a decent puree (I hate it when they are oily).

Lamb Korahi

We asked our waiter for a recommendation for the mains saying we were after a lamb dish. He asked if we like onions, we replied we do (would be unwise to be in an Indian restaurant if we didn't!) so he recommended special lamb korahi. It was under The Rayners specialities section so sounded worth a try. A korahi is a round cooking pot (similar in shape to a wok) used in Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Nepalese cuisine. When a stew is made is on the dish is generally named after the pot eg. "chicken karahi" and "karahi paneer." The lamb was delicous - lots of big, tender chunks in a tomato, pepper and onion sauce with nice, subtle spice flavours. 

Saag Paneer & Mixed Vegetable Curry

 The sides ordered were saag paneer, mixed vegetable curry, garlic naan and plain rice. Usually in London saag dishes are served as a pureed spinach sauce (often from canned spinach), but this was made with fresh spinach, some chunks of fresh tomato and big cubes of paneer. Not being in a "gravy" made it lighter tasting than a more traditional version. We liked it a lot. The mixed vegetable curry was a nice mix of fresh vegetables, mildly spiced and with curry leaves. It went well with the lamb.

The staff were lovely and they'd made an effort to creat a nice ambience (nice lighting, candles on the tables, posh (Chinese looking!?) plates and flowers on the table). The food was good, but for our tastes, a little lacking in chilli kick. It's certainly improved since the refurbishment, but isn't going to be entering our favourite top 3 on the Rayners Lane curry strip.

Address: 383 Alexandra Avenue, Rayners Lane, Harrow, HA2 9EF    T: 020 88684317
W: raynerstandoori.com

Ruby M's

Ruby M's is an Indo-Chinese bar restaurant, opened in 1998. It's one of our favourite places on the Rayners Lane curry strip offering consistenly good food, service and great value.

The restaurant is split into a bar area to the left and to the right a large dinning area tastefully decorated in dark wood with booths and free standing tables that can be re-arranged for big groups. There are large flat screen TVs dotted throughout the restaurant, which are sure to be on and showing Bollywood films, Bolly music clips or sport. We much prefer the Bolly TV nights to the sport.

There's a large menu split into Indian food and Indian-Chinese food and they have chefs specialising in the two different types of cuisines. Indian Chinese cuisine is the adaptation of Chinese seasoning and cooking techniques to Indian tastes. Indian Chinese cuisine is said to have been developed by the small Chinese community that has lived in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) for over a century. Today, the Chinese food has become an integral part of the Indian culinary scene. Indian-Chinese foods tend to be flavoured with spices such as cumin, coriander seeds, and turmeric, which with a few regional exceptions, are traditionally not associated with much of Chinese cuisine. Hot chilli, ginger, garlic and yogurt are also frequently used in dishes. Culinary styles you are sure to see at Rayners Lane restaurants offering Indian-Chinese fare include chilli (implying hot and batter-fried), Manchurian (implying a sweet and salty brown sauce), and Szechwan (usually spelled Schezuan in Indian Chinese cooking, implying a spicy red sauce). These correspond only loosely, if at all, with authentic Chinese food preparation. Soon after moving to Rayners Lane I ordered Manchurian cauliflower. It reminded me of a toffee apple, done with cauliflower with chilli added and served hot. I haven't ordered Indian-Chinese since.

At Ruby M's we stick to the Indian menu. On our most recent visit we started with daal bhajias and chicken tikka.  The daal dhajia were delicious spicy, crispy and crunchy lentil fritters with a nice chilli kick and at six balls it was a generous serving. The chicken tikka had been well-marinated with the flavours penetrating through the chicken. It was tender, spicy and delicious. At six peices it was another generous serving and the even number meant we didn't have to fight over the last bit. Past favourites from the Ruby M's start menu include stuffed mushrooms (mushrooms stuffed with herbs and spices marinated overnight and cooked in the tandoor), garlic mogo (cassava chips with garlic) and Ajwani paneer tikka (large peices of paneer cooked in the tandoor with tomatoes and peppers).

For the mains we had bhindi lamb (lamb with okra), chana masala (chickpeas in a tangy sauce), bangan bharta (mashed aubergine cooked with herbs and spices) chilli and garlic naan and jeera rice (basmati rice cooked with cumin seeds and curry leaves). Every dish was fantastic. The aubergine had a delicious smoky flavour, the lamb was tender and full of flavour and the chickpeas were incredibly moreish. We couldn't get through all of it so our waiter happily boxed up a doggy bag for us to take home. It was great value - all that food + a tasty bottle of Cassilero del Diablo sauvignon blanc for £50 with enough left overs for another full meal for two.

The chef oveseeing the Indian menu at Ruby M's, Mario Albuquerque, is from Goa so the menu also features a number of Goan dishes. From past visits we can recommend his coconut-flavoured Goan dishes including xacatti chicken, mixed veg caldin and Goan prawns.

Address: 466-468 Alexandra Avenue, Rayners Lane, Harrow HA2 9TL
T: 020 8429 3993  W: rubyms.com

Where is Rayners Lane?

Rayners Lane is in northwest London, officially in Middlesex, on the Metropolitan and Piccadilly tube lines. So you can easily get out here in around 30 minutes from central London.  In the early 1800s the area was in the hands of the Rayner family, who owned a farm, hence the tube station now being called Rayners Lane.

The area was drastically built up between 1929 and 1938 by Harrow's biggest interwar housebuilder T.F. Nash who created a shopping parade on Alexandra Avenue. House prices started at around a cheap £600 leading the area to rapidly grow.

The shopping arcade on Alexandra Avenue is today's Rayners Lane curry trip. The avenue became a conservation area in 2002 thanks to the street's striking Modernist and Art Deco buildings. Ones to check out while you are here are the London Underground Station, the former ACE cinema and the shops at 468-472 Alexandra Avenue (where you'll find great curries at Ruby Ms). Each building has a very individual character and represents fine examples of the 'International' and 'Art Deco' strands of inter-war modernist architecture.  

The old ACE cinema, with its stylised elephant's trunk and curved 'head', is now used as the Zoroastrian centre - the only official temple of its type in the UK. I think it's because of this that Rayners Lane has turned into curry heaven, so a little explanation about Zoroastrianism is probably warranted...

Zoroastrianism used to be among the world's largest religions. It was founded by the Prophet Zoroaster in ancient Iran (Persia) approximately 3500 years ago. For more on Zoroastrianism (Freddie Mercury was one!) read up at BBC religions.

It is now one of the world's smallest religions. In 2006, the New York Times reported that there were probably less than 190,000 followers worldwide at that time. The UK has the largest number of Zoroastrian's in Europe with 6,000, compared to 1,000 in mainland Europe. The only Zoroastrian place of worship in Europe is the old Art Deco cinema in Rayners Lane.

Way back in 651 CE, following the fall of the Sassanid Empire, many Zoroastrians migrated to South Asia, meaning today the majority of Zoroastrian followers are of Parsi Indian, Pakistani and Iranian descent. Meaning here in Rayners Lane we have an eclectic mix of curry restaurants, sweet shops and cash & carry stores. There's also a large number of Sri Lankan restaurants. If I work out why I'll make that a seperate blog post. For now it's time to move on to food....

Top image: Ad for houses in Rayners Lane, The Weekly Illustrated Magazine, 4 May 1935.

Zoroastrian Centre image: Guv_Phull, instagram.