Your favourite Indian restaurant in the West Mids

[Tom Joad]

For veg samosas you'd be pushed to better Sagars, High St. West Brom. About 25p each, huge and very tasty. Service is haphazard mind, and no Michelin star. Their take away meals, cartoned up for the fridge/freezer are also excellent at bargain prices.

Taggars is the sweet shop for me Tom, Carters Green just up from the Wheatsheaf. Veg samosas are good and veg pakora is banging. Always get a kilo of that, greedy fucker that I am. Then can never resist a pint of Holdens after. Rude to just walk pastm

Cheers, I'll give them a try. I'm in that area as often as time allows and good as Sagars is, they never have any idea who is next or where your order went!

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After spending so much time in India over the last couple years I have to admit British curry houses have lost a lot of their appeal… the price, quality of ingredients and lack of variety really has been a bit of a let down so I tend to cook a lot more of my own stuff now.

Shout out to Naan and Roti on Ladypool Road in Spark Hill, fantastic breads and dirt cheap for those of you who head into Spark Hill to stock up.

I found this after my 1st visit to India many years ago and it was reinforced by my latest.  There is something about the bangladeshi balti houses that doesn't quite do it for me. I prefer any of the desi pubs and tend to use them more for family get togethers and matchdays. To me it is as if the former cater for what they believe the public want whereas the latter seem to present food the way they like it. I've probably made that too general but it is just simply the way it seems to me.

The majority of restaurants use paste as the base.  As such, they lose so many notes that Indian food can deliver with the use of whole spices.   My analogy is an artist painting using 8 different colours.  Another artist uses the same colours but mixes them all together to make one colour and he paints with the one mixed colour only.

Those who have never had properly* home cooked Indian food are massively missing out .

*cooking from scratch with whole and ground spices, not a  supermarket bought sauce

Unfortunately there are many balti houses who belie the moniker of an Indian restaurant ... they are Bangladeshi and the cuisine there is totally different. Sugar is added to many dishes and an overuse of artificuial colouring. This, for some (many?) is what they have been led to believe is authentic Indian food ... a red tinge to each piece of meat etc. Indian homecooking (in my household anyway) never uses colouring or adds sugar in a curry. Turmeric gives food a natural colouring. It's correct that the flavours are derived from the use of spices with onions and herbs to give the real authentic taste of Indian food.

It is far removed from the food that is served at many restaurants.

This is my experience, hence much preferring to eat in Indian pubs not Bangladeshi supposedly (Indian?) restaurants.
 I've also found in India you are sometimes asked when making an order, if you want it "with gravy". The way they expect English people to like it.