Sultan's Palace

This restaurant opened in 2001 and is on a quite busy central street. The dining room is down a couple of flights of stairs, and has several comfortable booths as well as regular tables. Noise levels were quite high at this busy service due to the hard surfaces in the dining room. Cobra beer was £5.25 a pint on draft, and as alternatives there was Kingfisher and Stella Artois by the bottle. Popadoms were crisp and came with a tray of fairly standard chutneys:  mango, garlic, lime and mint. Tandoori prawns had decent flavour but arrived on a very hot sizzling griddle, which meant they kept cooking as they rested on the table. They were not inherently overcooked but were starting to get that way after a minute or two (12/20). Chicken tikka was better, the pieces of meat tender and with a quite lively marinade with a kick of chilli (13/20). They came with a side salad of carrot onion lettuce.

Southern garlic chicken curry was quite good, with a lively touch of chilli and plenty of garlic, the meat being quite tender (13/20). The only duff dish of the meal was aloo gobi, where the potatoes and cauliflower were definitely at the soggy end of the cooking spectrum (10/20). By contrast, palak paneer was good, with plenty of spinach flavour and quite good paneer (13/20). Garlic naan was a tad firmer than I would have liked but was otherwise fine (12/20).  Pilau rice was also good.

Service was well-meaning rather than especially efficient. Our waitress had been working here for a few months yet still seemed to be struggling with the tablet-based ordering system. Getting extra drinks was a bit harder than it should have been, which also went for obtaining fresh cutlery between courses and getting the table swept after the main course. Still, the service seemed well-intentioned. The bill came to £44 each with beer to drink. Overall, Sultan’s Palace was a quite traditional and pleasant curry house, with mostly decent food at a modest price.