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We'd heard a lot of good things about the Dinajpur both from friends and in the local press so we thought we'd give it a try. Everyone seemed to agree that Friday night would be busy so we booked a table for 8:30. Arriving promptly, we first thought we'd walked in to a bar by mistake. The waiting area was heaving with drinkers and a few had even spilled out on to the street. We announced our arrival and the occupants of some of the wicker chairs were evicted to make room for us. There was plenty of Bombay mix available whilst we drank our beers and made our choices from the menu. Our order was taken after about twenty minutes and we were assured our table was almost ready. We received the same assurance 5 minutes later. A mere 32 minutes later than our booked time we were shown to our table, one of about 9 crowded into the dining area. We were pleasantly surprised to find some free popadoms and chutneys waiting. For starters, we ordered two lots of onion bhajees and some sheek kebabs. There were two large bhajees in each portion. They were sort of flat but fat - more like half squashed balls than true discs. They were quite tasty and had a good consistency of a crispy outer and moist innards. Unusually, the insides were bright red! The sheek kebabs arrived on a sizzler with a generous helping of fried onions. Both were quite large although one was larger than the other. They were quite spicy and tasted great. When they arrived, all three main dishes looked pretty much the same. As promised on the menu, the Chicken Pathia, usually hot, was mild. The chicken pieces were tender, well marinated and sat in a thickish tasty sauce. The Chicken Chilli Massalla was uncharacteristically mild except for the chillies themselves. The sauce was rather watery but there were plenty of pieces of chicken and the overall portion size was not too bad. The Chicken Jalfrezi was a big disappointment. The sauce was like soup and the chicken pieces looked as if they were the offcuts from all the other dishes. Even the chillies seemed as if they were dried rather than fresh being very brittle and almost completely lacking in heat. Had we known how runny the gravy was going to be, we might have ordered rice. However, we opted for the usual selection of nans. The keema nan contained plenty of meat and was cooked reasonably well. The first kulcha nan was well stuffed but had an inordinate amount of fennel seeds which gave an overwhelming taste of aniseed. It was also too thick and doughy. The same couldn't be said for the second kulcha nan. The underside was missing and along with it had gone most of the stuffing. The Dinajpur was another restaurant which didn't live up to it's own hype. It was very busy and the situation wasn't helped by the owner/manager promising to find a table for everyone who wandered in off the street claiming to be a regular. We'd booked a table and had to wait longer than most of these. With people being hustled in and out of seats, the atmosphere was reminiscent of a cattle market but here the 'cows' were not sacred. The nibbles we'd consumed during our long, long wait also took the edge of our appetites. Whilst we were waiting and also whilst we were dining, we had been positioned next to loudspeakers blasting out Celine Dion, Chris de Burgh and the like at high volume which made conversation somewhat difficult. The service, once we received some, wasn't too bad - except that our table was next to the kitchen door and SteveB's chair was constantly knocked by one clumsy waiter who also deposited a dish of rice on the floor by our feet. There were some nice touches - the free popadoms and a complimentary fruit salad after our meal. However, when we received the bill, we'd been overcharged for the onion bhajees. Somehow, the 'free' popadoms had also crept on to the bill. When we pointed these errors out, the bill was corrected and profuse apologies were offered. The Scores
Which gives an overall rating of 2.5 bhajis.
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restaurant factfile
