Amin’s
review
Our selfless quest continues and we decided
to try out the Amin’s restaurant in Heath Road. It is unusual as its sign
outside proudly advertises it as a Bangladeshi restaurant (the majority in
Twickenham are but generally hide under the Indian Restaurant banner).
Amin’s is not licensed , it is a ‘Bring
Your Own’, so a quick visit to the Tesco Express very close by, secured the
necessary curry meal accompaniment of chilled lager. We arrived at the restaurant and we were received
with a friendly greeting and were quickly seated. We all had carrier bags full
of beer, so the waiter brought us beer glasses and offered to put the unopened
cans and bottles in the fridge, which he duly did.
The menu had a good selection of standard
dishes and a few house specials. Whilst we were deciding what to have, we
started with our usual pappadoms and pickles. These were freshly cooked and the
pickles were tasty.
Two of our group chose the Chicken Dansak,
which came with Pilau rice, one chose the Chicken Jalfrezi and I had one of the
house specials, Sali Chicken Tikka, which also came with Pilau rice. We ordered
side dishes of Sag Aloo, Bhindi Bhaji, Tarka Dall and Vegetable Curry. The food
arrived and it was immediately apparent that we needed a bigger table! All the
main courses and side dishes were a generous size, including a large individual
dish of rice, kept hot by a plate warming thingy. All the main sauces were tasty and the Sali
sauce was caramelised giving it an unusual but tasty sweet and sour flavour,
quoting from the menu; ‘Very unique
recipe similar to our pathia with a caramelised sauce but garnished with fried
julienne potato (technically known as crispy chippy bits)’. The Chicken Dansak dish
was not over spicy hot and was highly rated and nothing was left on the plate!
The Jalfrezi was good but a comment was made about the high salt content.
The decor was clean and minimalist and the atmosphere
was very relaxed and the service was excellent. The friendly waiter was
attentive and replenished our empty beer glasses in an efficient and cheery
manner. An added bonus was that Amin’s do not charge corkage, which made a big
difference to the overall cost of the meal , which we found was great value
(£17 per person).
All in all, Amin’s is one of the better Curry
establishments in Twickenham.
We scored Amin’s as follows:
Service: 8.25
Quality: 7.9
Price: 8
Ambience: 6.4
30th May 2012
