East Meets West In Wiltshire!
Yes, as the title suggests, East unfortunately met West this evening! Lottie and I decided to celebrate my first interview selection with a Curry. Lottie enquired “what if you don’t get the job?” to which I replied “we’ll be eating out a lot!” 
I thought it would be a super opportunity to sample one of the many restaurants in our new Home Town and it’s always a must to find a decent curry house isn’t it. Thanks to Google we agreed on a visit to The Maharaja, close to the Kennet & Avon Canal. Their website conjures romantic images of opulence, sophistication and royalty. In reality it was a pretty shabby ‘front room of a house’ establishment that probably sees more ‘take-away’ customers than sit down patrons. That prediction was based somewhat on fact as we sat there for an hour and a half eating our spoils of celebration.
Initial first impressions aside, let’s order food!
We shared some plain and spicy poppadoms together with the chutney tray. I also partook in a starter course; Prawn Puree. I hadn’t had that in years and love it so much. We all but finished off the chutney tray so that was good value for money LOL
Our main courses were Korma for Lottie and a Cocktail Massala with additional birds-eye chilli’s for me accompanied with their Special Rice and a round of Peshwari Naan.
The food flavours were passable although completely lacking in artistic flair for the presentation. A case of ‘plopped on a plate’. The food presentation pretty much complimented the cheap décor, crockery and soft furnishings. Our somewhat short stay was ruined by the Arctic temperatures and bristling breeze through the room. There was no more than 6 small tables so you can visualise the size of the room. It also housed a small bar in the corner.
Our puddings were collected from upstairs – how novel! After taking our order he disappeared behind a wind-driven faded velvet curtain that had frankly seen better days. We heard him plod up the stairs appearing our side of the curtain again with puddings in hand. He passed our table, with our puddings, and Lottie broke out into a whimpering chuckle as she witnessed him defrosting our desserts under the hot tap behind the bar. Nice!
As with most Indian restaurants, the pudding selection is a mass produced frozen ice menagerie. Mine (a mango slush and coconut ice-cream) was pretty bland but Lottie’s Lemon sorbet, in a lemon (how original… yawn), was ever so refreshing and I wished I had ordered the same. Hindsight can be so cruel!
So, 47 quid and a pregnantesque belly later I thought I’d tell you all about it. I wont go there again and wouldn’t recommend it either; we’ve only been back home for 20 minutes and already there’s a rather nasty bristling breeze of my own brewing! 3/10 for the restaurant. 8/10 for the fart-factor! Yes, a high score there and one that makes me cautious when opening my stove to give it a stoking tonight
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Penned by admin at 8:59 pm | Comment here!
Aargh! Are you surviving? Wish you’d texted me first!
Next time, try the Thai Barn for eastern delights, it’s lovely and the Feng Shui next to Sainsbury’s is also okay too. There is no decent Indian in the area – you need to hop on the train to Bath. Other than that the Bunch of Grapes is fine for pub grub, and the Fat Fowl and the Dandy Lion are both lovely but a bit pricey. For a real treat we used to heave ourselves up the hill to the Castle, lovely food, brilliant beer and wine list, understandably rammed at weekends and early evenings though, get there early.
The Barge is okay but I was somewhat taken aback one evening when the entire staff decided to have a takeaway meal (from the Majarajah no less) in the midst of their diners eating the Barge’s food! Not much of an advert.
I can’t comment on the food at the Lock Inn as I am banned from there, after I pointed out that waiting for food for over two hours was unacceptable; apparently he only customers who know how to have fun” which seems to be a euphemism for drinking bucketloads while we get round to serving entirely ordinary food using ‘you-are-now-too-pissed-to-complain’ approach to customer satisfaction. It caters entirely for a holidaying clientele and not too many locals go there.
Jill
Haha… I’ll stay away from the Lock Inn then! As for the Beef, it’s now got new owners. Mind you, the new barmaid couldn’t even pour a decent bitter shandy so hope they’ll improve.
I’ve had my eye on the Castle, but Lottie’s a bit of a fussy bugger so would be a waste of money. I’ll wait for adult company to sample that one
The castle’s really nice and the fish and chip shop near the train station is pretty good too.
Despite your warning I’m going to be having a takeaway from the Maharaja tonight, I can’t resist the buy one get one free offer they’ve got going down. Hopefully I’ll not end up with twice the bellyache.
The lock in is ok if you don’t expect much. Fine for bog standard and reasonably priced things like egg chips and beans
They do serve Gem though, which is a bonus. The beef and barge is just about the most depressing place on the planet imo.
I’m off to the fat fowl at the weekend so I’ll report back.
We’re off to the Fat Fowl tomorrow evening. 6 to 7.30 they’re running a photography drop-in session and my Daughter’s a bit of a photography nut. I like it too so should be good. Will eat and drink there too as it would be a shame not to
Well I can report that the tapas at the fat fowl is excellent and the service top notch.
Ah, cool! We arrived there the other night for the photography session only to find out that they’d re-scheduled it for two weeks later! I’ll try the Tapas, thanks for the recommendation