What the critics say: Lasan, Dishoom…

16th August 2010, 11:30am

A round-up of the latest reviews

Lasan, Birmingham
Zoe Williams, The Telegraph, 16 August

"Prawns, sautéed with spinach, with a herby onion and coriander curry (£12.95) were a disaster. The curry was thin, red and aggressive, differing from E's starter sauce only in colour. E said it was hot, but had no warmth. She kept making a face like a chipmunk, in involuntary reaction to the sharpness, rather than because she was trying to look cute. The prawns were tasteless, overcooked and yellow in the middle, which suggested to young Miss Sherlock that they had been cooked somewhere other than this very red sauce. 

"She certainly had a point – the sauce didn't taste of the prawns and the prawns didn't taste of the sauce. A Peshwari naan (£3.50) offset the sourness, but only because it tasted like a coconut doughnut (even the dough was sweet. Usually, the desiccated fruit filling is considered sweetness enough). She held out some hope that the earthiness of the spinach might cancel out the acidity of the vinegar, leaving her with an experience close to Zen. 

"That didn't work. And I did even worse, with the Old Delhi-style poussin (£12.95) – a spring chicken with ground coriander and roasted cumin, in a ginger-scented gravy that tasted mainly, confusingly, of Bovril. The chicken managed to be quite dry, despite its generous sousing in a gravy that was, again, strangely thin. I had a garlic and coriander naan (£3.50) and a cauliflower side dish (£6.50), which both would have tasted fine from a takeout, but in this context felt like winning the lottery."

Tempo, London
Richard Johnson, The Independent, 15 August

"The highlight is the lardo. Lardo is the butter of Italy – a cured pork fat, striated with rosemary. It's usually used for flavouring soups, but if you want to show an old-fashioned rusticity, serve it on its own. As I pop the bruschetta into my mouth, I regret everything negative I have ever felt about the Italians and their pedantry with food. Unfortunately, given the size of the bruschetta, that regret is only short-lived. 

"So I have high hopes of my Italian summer tomatoes (£6.50). Tomatoes don't taste like they used to. Their skins are bred for thickness to make them easy to transport. And they're never ripe – they are picked when they are green, moved to cold storage and forced to redness with ethylene gas. But Tempo douses my Italian summer tomatoes in balsamic, so that – even if they do taste different – I wouldn't know anything about it."

The Waterside Inn, Berkshire
John Walsh, The Independent, 14 August

"The room is wonderfully light, but not stylish. There's a suburban feel about the picture window, and the general air is of a middle-class wedding reception in a glamorous conservatory. A lot of foreign visitors are in tonight: a table of 10 Chinese toasting some breakthrough in population control; a septet of Americans high-fiving a computer-game deal, four Swiss-Germans doing a lot of forced laughing."

"Amuse-bouches were lovely: a tiny steak tartare with a sliver of soft-boiled quail egg on a McCoy's-style crisp; some yummy anchovy and parmesan pastry; a tiny masterpiece of prawn with onion and pomegranate seeds exploding in your mouth. Susie and I divvied up the four starters. Her flaked Devon crab with melon balls and a salty mango jus was surmounted by a single prawn, lightly curried. It was pretty ('traffic-light colours,' said Susie) and tasted terrific, but wouldn't stop traffic in Torquay. My foie gras terrine was a tranche of slimy goose liver given welcome friction by peppered pigeon breast and delicious pickled cherries – fine, but, like the single slice of brioche, not enough."

Dishoom, London
Jay Rayner, The Observer, 15 August

"The chicken biryani, cooked in a pastry-sealed pot, was terrific on the aromatics, the waft of cardamom, clove and turmeric hitting my olfactory bulb before a mouthful met the tongue, though it was a little dry. Their dark, pungent sticky lamb chops rubbed with black pepper and chillies were very good indeed, the outside deeply charred, the meat still pink. I would come back here for a plate of these. Or perhaps two, maybe three with a friend.

"Other than that, oh dear. Bombay sausages are what you would get if a mildly ambitious home cook decided they wanted to make Indian food but only had a pack of chipolatas to hand. It was, as we call it in the restaurant reviewing trade, A Very Bad Idea. Their cheesy naan promising 'melted cheddar inside' sounded awful, which is was why I ordered it. They lived down to my expectations. It is the kind of thing made by drunken students at 3am when all they have is the remains of yesterday's takeaway and a hunk of Cathedral City. (The plain naan was better.) 

"Their house black daal lacked depth and finesse. Worst of all, under the knowing "Ruby Murray" heading – a house curry of the day – was a sludge of puréed spinach and paneer, which looked like something that had come out of the wrong end of a baby who had just had a change of diet."

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