I’m not allowed to write all in capital letters because it’s unprofessional and shouty, but please read the headline again with the same amount of excitement that you would if it had been bellowed at you by a small, cockney boy wearing a flat cap and knee length pants, and preceded by the words, “Extra, Extra!” Unless, of course, you don’t like curry. In that case, keep scrolling down the stories for a photo of a massive crane.
It’s Chilli N Lime on Hope Street in Lostock Hall, and last Thursday evening I ordered a big old pile of food for myself and my mum to celebrate her recovery from a heart bypass by giving it a bit of a workout.
Long time BP readers might remember my 79-year-old mother Yvonne from my earlier reviews. She could always be relied upon to stick her little monkey thumb in a beautifully arranged sushi photo, or to take big, thundering scoops out of a tub of hummus with none of the essential ratio calculations needed to ensure that both dip and nachos are finished in perfect unison, prior to commencing said dippage. She was a bloody menace to be honest. Anyway, she’s back and I invited her round to smear curry all over my new kitchen worktops, apparently.
To be fair, Yvonne’s a great person to get a takeaway with because she just says, “I’ll have whatever you want,” but that’s too much responsibility for someone who has to ask bar staff to decide what colour wine I’m going to drink because even that choice is too stressful for me, which is why I ended up buying three main courses, a side and some naan bread. However, there were no regrets because I have loads of room in my freezer and low self esteem.
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We ordered from Chilli N Lime’s own website and it arrived about 50 minutes later, as stated when we ordered.
The first thing we noticed when we took off the lids were the marked differences in the aromas and the appearances of each dish. The best Indian curries start with a stock of simple spices, then each individual dish gets more intricate on top of that, but far too many restaurants and takeaways that sell “Indian” food have one generic sauce into which they just add (often just before serving) food colouring, vegetables, the meat of choice, more chilli, coconut, tomato, sugar or cream. Even when the one-size-fits-all sauce is good, it can be disappointing to order several different curries that look different but taste almost identical.
The first curry we tried was Peshwari made with chicken tikka for £8.75, described as “a stylish curry with onion, tomato, coriander, chillies, flavoured with coconut.” I’d ordered this one for Yvonne as I don’t normally like sweet curries, but it was surprisingly good. Despite being classed as a sweet curry, it wasn’t at all sickly like the previous versions of Peshwari I’ve tried, and the other ingredients listed weren’t just a side note. Every one of them was discernible and none was overpowered by the sweetness, which meant that I still felt like you were eating a tasty, interesting curry, not a dessert. There were lots of chunks of chicken, and no bulking ingredients sneaked in there like big chunks of onions to pad it out. It became apparent as we ate that being able to taste each ingredient listed in the curry’s description was a running theme in every dish from Chilli N Lime.
The favourite for both of us was Shatkora for £8.95 – “Lamb cooked in a slightly hot and tangy sauce using zesty Bangladeshi wild lemons.” I wouldn’t know the difference between a Bangladeshi wild lemon and an English… domesticated(?) one if it rubbed itself in my eyes, but I am absolutely willing to believe that this Shatkora – a curry I’ve never tried or heard of before – contained them, because it was indeed slightly hot, tangy, zesty, lamby, and wildly lemony. The lamb was fall-apart tender like it had been slow cooked, and the chunks of meat were huge.
A Sizzlin’ Palate for £10.50 contained chicken tikka, lamb tikka, lamb chop, shish kebab and bone-in tandoori chicken with a fresh chopped side salad garnish and small tub of raitha, which negated a slight dryness in some of the meat that is an unavoidable effect of being transported for three miles and kept hot. We chose to add an optional extra portion of pathia sauce for just £1 to go with it, which was fantastic value, especially considering how much meat there was, and the quality of the sauce which was described as “a hot, sweet and sour dish cooked with lemon juice and garlic, with a blend of spices,” and was exactly that. It was delicious.
The fragrant, plain Naan for £2.50 was a reasonable size and nice and chewy – we gave it a bit of a perk up in the air fryer because the steam had made it a little soggy – which worked fine.
The Tarka Daal side dish for £3.75 was simply described as “Tempered Lentils.” I’m not sure exactly what that means but I wholeheartedly believe that the chef tempered the living daylights of those lentils. It was garlicky, savoury, comforting and faultless.
What impressed me so much about this takeaway was the vast difference in flavours in everything we ordered. Even the lamb in the Shatkora was different in taste and texture than the lamb in the mixed grill. Each item felt like it was homemade, from scratch, by someone with a few hours on their hands who loves cooking and has gone out that morning specifically with a shopping list of ingredients.
I can’t wait to order from there again because there are a number of other interesting sounding specials on the menu that I want to try, but I’m also excited to go down the list of the “traditional” curries that I usually avoid – the Kormas, Bhunas, and Dansaks – because, after tasting how startlingly good Chilli N Lime’s Peshwari was, I have absolute faith that no corners will be cut and I’ll get to find out why those curries were traditional favourites before British curry houses started adapting how they’re made to appeal to the lads at closing time, decades ago.
Have you seen the size of that crane? Let us know what you thought of it in the comments.
Read more: All of Karen’s reviews
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