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.