My best friends are two of those visitors from planet veggie, and, as they will freely admit, fussy with it. I do have some sympathy, as why should they suffer the inevitable vegetable lasagne or mushroom stroganoff, while B & I have a veritable smorgasbord of deelites to chose from in comparison whenever we all visit eateries that supposedly also cater for the vegetarian?
So, whenever B & I and Phill & his "missus" go out as foursome to a restaurant we invariably end up at Pooja, an authentic Hindi vegetarian restaurant in Wellingborough. Run with an easy going charm by your host Majood (apologies for probable incorrect spelling), Pooja, meaning "worship", was originally and still does derive it's main income from a catering business, serving a substantial local Indian population, and supplying numerous curry houses in the area. The restaurant was started when the owners decided to recreate the home cooking that they missed over here, knowing a large Hindi community lived on their doorstep.
Upon arrival be prepared to be underwhelmed by the location - seemingly a room stuck on the end of the catering business as an afterthought, next to a car wash! The service is friendly, but can be a bit haphazard, and the larger your party, the more hit and miss it becomes. Don't be put off though, because the food is well worth any occasional gripes with the service. The restaurant is usually full of mainly Indian families and can get rather noisy, but that just lends to the atmosphere. You'll need to book at weekends.
Me and Phill usually share one starter, and our partners usually share another. Ours is the simply scrummy Chili Paneer (should be obvious) mopped up with Mogo Chips (wonderful chips made from cassava root). My main course now varies between three staples - in no particular order of preference, firstly we have Kadai Bengun Aloo, which actually does not appear on the online menu below, but I know it as "No.74" from the restaurant menu. It is essentially a potato & aubergine curry - exquisite! Those of you more familiar with the ubiquitous Anglicised curry houses that abound in our towns will probably be unfamiliar with at least some of the dishes. The cryptic descriptions do not give much away either. My favourite is "Indian cheese with mixed gravy" (Paneer Kadai). This is a derivative of "No.74" where the cheese replaces the potato. Their conception of "gravy" is not at all similar to ours!
My second "staple" is the less filling but still very tasty Rava Onion Masala Dhosa (onions and potatoes and spices in an Indian pancake). The Dhosa pancake in the South Indian section of the menu is a house speciality and needs to be tried. Thirdly comes Hakka Noodles from the China Gate fusion section of the menu. For once the description "Noodles with vegetables in sauce" is fairly accurate, but does not really do it justice.
We never have room for desserts, but Pooja is well known for its seemingly infinite variety of Indian sweets, which you can buy over the counter to take away.
This is the menu, also available on a takeaway basis. The prices maybe a bit out of date (Majood should be told!), but if you add 30p to everything, you're about there, and it sure is value for money:
http://www.poojacaterers.co.uk/menu.htm
If you love Indian food, try the real thing, not the Anglicised version, and you will be pleasantly surprised by the taste explosion that awaits your tongue. Pooja does not rely on making everything taste largely the same as is the case with the usual High Street curry house, nor does it assume that the English only think a curry is "real" if it's so chili hot it blows your tongue clean out of your head. It doesn't have to you see, because the majority of its clientele are Indian. The emphasis is on flavour, not chili heat, although of course some dishes are hotter than others.
All in all a thoroughly wonderful tastebud experience, well worth a visit even for us carnivores!
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