Sarashwathy Bavans

SARASHWATHY BAVANS

Cuisine: South Indian

Nearest tube: Wembley Central

Address: 549 High Road, Wembley, HA0 2DJ

Tel: 0208 902 1515

If you haven’t tried South Indian food, you must hate yourself. Why do you hate yourself?

So to give you a quick summary, it’s completely different to the Indian most people are used to. Firstly, it’s completely vegetarian. Don’t let that put you off. Still with me? Secondly, it’s about half the price. Yeah, now you’re interested, you tight goink. This is the place my girlfriend Lauren demands we visit, without fail, every time she’s in London. It’s easy to see why: the food is delicious, and it’s obscenely cheap.

The restaurant itself is big and bright, old Christmas decorations and fairy lights stuck to the ceiling, and is slightly clinical, a bit like a hospital canteen. It’s usually empty up until around eight o’clock, when it really starts to fill up. The fact that this place seems to be a favourite with the locals is a big plus, because there are a LOT of curry houses in Wembley. All the diners eat with their hands, but if you attempt this, avoid the common faux-pas and make sure you don’t use the hand you use to wipe your arse. Or just use cutlery. And toilet paper.

The food, ah the food. A compulsory opener is a mango lassi, a thick, cool, creamy drink which is almost better suited as a dessert. Starters include bhel poori (think rice krispies + spices + salad, trust me, it’s better than it sounds), gobi 65 (spicy battered cauliflower) and mogo chips (fat, crispy plantain chips). The speciality main course is the massala dosa, a huge crispy pancake filled with creamy spiced potato, but other favourites include the Madras thali, an enormous platter complete with about ten different curries (all of which are delicious), pappadoms, rice, salad etc. Lauren’s dish, which I’m pretty sure she loves more than she loves me, is the chola poori: a buttery, fluffy fried bread, the size of a goddamn airbag, served with a chickpea curry. If pooris were a person, I’d be single.

Mysore masala dosa

Chola poori, modelled by the lovely Lauren

The service is generally good; the head waiter is a friendly chap who knows us, knows what we order, and bullies us into having starters in an almost menacing fashion. It’s usually fast, but does tend to grind to a halt after eightish, so unless you want service slower than a council worker on a bank holiday, I recommend an early visit.

And boy is it cheap. Cheaper than that level in Mario filled with flying Cheep-Cheeps. (One of the luxuries of writing my own blog is including jokes that nobody will understand but me). You can eat on a fiver, and even if you completely stuff your face like a big fat bastard, you’ll struggle to spend more than £10 a head. Get down there now.

Service 3/5

Food 4/5

Value 5/5

Ambience 3/5

Total: 15/20

Why you should go there: Delicious food and criminally cheap.

Don’t leave without trying: Massala dosa