Mirpur, Northampton
Friday, 10 December 1999
restaurant factfile

A couple of us had been to the Mirpur at lunchtimes and always liked the food - especially the onion bhajis. We found ourselves unexpectedly free this particular evening, so decided to
give it a go! The Mirpur is a pleasant place but does go over the top with the artificial plants. We kept expecting David Bellamy to appear from the undergrowth! Some of the tables (like ours) are in booths that are extremely cramped when fully occupied. We had to move the table away from the wall to give us some elbowroom but this later caused problems for the waiters wheeling the trolley to the tables beyond us.

This time we all opted to kick off with the onion bhajis, as their excellence on previous visits had become legendary. Once again they were excellent. The only criticisms were that they were a bit on the small size and perhaps a bit dry on the inside. But, Hey! add some mint splatter to that bhaji and it melts in the mouth.

Without any further ado, our main courses arrived. The chicken methi was a little on the mild side for a medium curry, but otherwise tasted good with plenty of meat. The chicken Moglay was very mild, with a good mix of small tender pieces of chicken, lychees and pineapple in a non-coconutty sauce (NOTE: SteveB obviously wouldn't recognise a coconut if it bit him on the arse. That was the most coconutty sauce the rest of us had tasted!) but could have done with more chicken. The chicken balti was massive. Loads of thick sauce and plenty of chicken even a bit of potato thrown in for good measure. Nans were again the preferred method of mopping. The two keema nans were well stuffed although in one the filling had slipped to one end so that it seemed to have been stuffed with a sheek kebab and it was a bit too crispy on the bottom whilst the other one was a bit burnt in places! The garlic nan had a good texture, but wasn't very garlicky.

As we had a good half hour before IanD's curfew, we decided to splash out on kulfi. We ordered two mangos and a pistachio but an apologetic waiter returned to inform us that they only had one mango. When PhilS plumped for the pistachio, he was told that they only had one of those too so he ended up with an almond kulfi. All flavours were acceptable although the texture was a bit gritty - probably to match the inside of the dish which set IanD's teeth on edge when scraped with a spoon.

Overall, we were impressed by the Mirpur except for the cramped booths. The service was certainly brisk. The place was near deserted when we arrived at 8:15 but by the time we left at 9:30 all of the tables were full or spoken for.

The Scores

Which gives an overall rating of 3.5 bhajis.