Address: 73 to 83 Liverpool Road, City Centre

Phone number: 0161 832 4883

Rating: 3.5/5

Visited by the Curry Night on: Thursday 11th February 2010

Website: www.khanbaba.co.uk

General comments: The first curry night trip of 2010 took us to Khan Ba Ba, a fairly new curry house opened next door to Akbar's to presumably try to take advantage of that restaurant's popularity.  Unfortunately, that does not quite appear to be the case just yet, although there is nothing to fault on the service or décor.  The food gets mostly good reviews from our keen-eyed reviews.

Thursday 11th February 2010

"I was going to do a review [but is too busy so this is a paraphrased summary of a conversation].  Basically I thought that it wasn't much cop.  My main was ok, but I've had better.  The starter was ok but the batter to prawn ratio was not right [too much batter, one suspects].  And they served garlic naan that looked like it would be more comfortable in an Italian restaurant [a running theme, as we shall see], and I hate that!"

"Nice social layout - low benchy tables, and contrary to popular/drunken belief they DO serve poppadoms (although they do charge), and not only that they reload your sauces [at spaceman's request - the dishes weren't that large and spaceman does like a bit of onion chutney], and bring more poppadoms (for more money, of course).  Draft Cobra, always a pleasure.  My starter [you said main, but I think you meant starter] was a kebab with a funny name that contained cheese, which was something different, and tasted nice, if unconventional.

My main was a variation on lamb tikka.  Again, very nice but not life-changing [gone are the days of life-changing curries, although see Quincy's entry].  My only real issue was that the lamb bits were absolute boulders, which may have given the dish a bit of a psychological edge on me.  Decent quality meat, and very eatable sauce, which was slightly stymied by the toast-style garlic naans.  To be fair, I should have switched to regular naan, but to be even fairer I shouldn't have to, dammit.

So again, Khan Ba Ba does the food well, but while one sundry issue was fixed (the possibly fictional lack of poppadums), there was still another biggy to deal with (naan bread should not be Pizza Hut garlic bread).  I would definitely return, though, partly motivated by the opportunity to sample the wide range of esoteric menu choices [spaceman agrees] - somewhere to go when you don't just want another chicken bhuna.  Hard to say where it stands in the increasingly crowded league table of city centre curry venues, due to its unconventional charms."

"Cask beforehand and afterwards was good (swift Cruzcampo before, some kind of wheat beer afterwards).  Khan Ba Ba was pleasant enough, and contrary to popular belief (i.e. me, Brungerio and spaceman [who had been previously]) it does do poppadoms [we'd been out with JNo - we were drunk].  It also does Cobra, which is nice.  On the other hand, the curry I had was a medium lamb-in-gravy type affair, which damn near killed me.  Genuinely think I've become allergic to chilli in my old age [Quincy specifically requested a swing-door mechanism to be installed at the gents as he was there that often on the subsequent Friday - spaceman has since advised of the specific benefits of Imodium].  As a result, I have decided to give up curries entirely (at least of the Indian variety - Thai and Japanese, to be confirmed).  Look forward to future reviews of cobra, chicken nuggets and chips, or cobra, steak and chips.  Maybe a korma if I'm feeling adventurous [you only had a medium, for chrissakes!].  Also, the email spell-checker throws up "pompadours" as an alternative to "poppadoms".  This is brilliant.  [Don't change the subject.]"