The Asha

Sector: Whitley Street Stardate: 27 May 2005 Event: New restaurant! Go back to Naan Trek home page

The first new curry house to appear in the Quadrant since the Blue Ginger over two years ago. We explored this strange new world two days after it openned, seemingly going boldly there before anyone had been there before.

AMBIANCE

Contemporary

Decor: Modern: peachy magnolia walls superposed with large brown ellipses "Chocolate buttons" (Bennett). Even the extractor fan was decorated.
Music: Twangy authentic stuff with funky yet subtle undertones.

Time to get served: 18 minutes.
Favourite menu description: of the Chicken Tikka Korma: "Barbequed king prawns".

• Could hardly complain about the service, with at least 5 waiters waiting on us all the time. There were only two other diners in there though.

Popadums and chutneys: Five dips: lime pickle, yoghurt, jamy chutney, lemony thing, onion thing.
Lime pickle: "Tastes good but looks like a fruit salad".

Vegetable Paneer: "Delicious - really good" (Hogan).
Lamb Korma: "A bit chewy" (Peubey).
Ckicken Bhuna: "A lot smaller than expected, run of the mill, chewy, odd (2.5/5)" (Davies).
Chicken Korma: "Chicken tough, and I've just discovered a pineapple" (Shonk).
Garlic Chicken: "Garlic undetectable, chicken tender, onion and random vegetables underdone and crunchy; if Reading was a curry, this would be it; bland and uninteresting".
Vegetable Pasanda: "No opinion as this is my first ever curry" (Van den Hoof).
Vegetable Massala: "Good".

• Mushroom rice: "very good" (Bennett and Dando).
• Garlic naan: "light and fluffy" (Davies).

Key:

Yes

No

Too drunk to remember

• Coca cola: flat to the extreme "may even be extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere - great for climate change" (Bennett).
• Kingfisher: delightful on a hot day (Mr Data pointed out nerdily that it was the hottest May day in Reading since 1960).

Not bad given it has just openned - worth visiting again. We award the Asha 3 Cobras: