The Madras Eatery has taken over the premises of the former Red Oven curry house at 607A Bearwood Rd, B66 4BJ. It’s on the first floor, above the Superdrug shop, and is accessed via a door on Anderson Road, but the signage is very easily visible from Bearwood Road. Madras Eatery specialises in South Indian cuisine. It’s a licensed restaurant with a couple of draught lagers, various bottled beers, a decent wine selection, plus a range of spirits and soft drinks. The inside is decorated in fresh light colours and there is a leaf green ceiling which works well as part of the interior design.
We had opted for a Groupon meal deal which included a starter, main course, drink and side dish, but lamb and seafood dishes had a supplemental charge. So we stuck to the deal and had vegetable or chicken dishes. A bit of a shame perhaps, as South Indian cuisine is known for its use of fish and it would have been good to be able to try out some of those dishes.
Gun Powder Paneer
I picked out the Gunpowder Paneer to try from the starter menu. The paneer cheese was cut into cubes and coated with a spicy blend before cooking. Gunpowder spice, also known as Milagai Podi, Idli Podi, or Kandi Podi, is a popular, fiery, and savoury dry condiment originating from South India. I’d not tried it before, but found it wasn’t too spicy, although it did have a very pleasant kick to it. This was a really refreshing dish with a nice fresh salad garnish to complement it.
Chicken Hariyali Tikka
For my main I had Nilgiri Chicken which was described as being cooked with coriander leaves, mint, spinach, green chillies and onion masala. It’s a famous dish from the Blue Mountain part of South India (near Ooty). I found that it was heavy on the spinach (generally a good thing in my book), but which did seem to overpower some of the other flavours. I tend to prefer rice with my curry, so I picked out Pulao Rice to go with my curry which worked well.
Overall the food seemed on the mild side. One of our party asked for ‘Indian spicy’ as she was recently back from traveling there and she still found her dish was milder than expected.
The service was good and accommodating. There was a bit of confusion as some had booked and others hadn’t, but they were able to fit us in on a biggish table at short notice on a Thursday night. The restaurant was fairly busy when we arrived around 6pm, but wasn’t so popular when we left.
Disclosure: I am part of a dining club and this was our first outing. We paid for our meals via a Groupon deal which was really good value. The group consensus was that whilst we enjoyed our meal, most wouldn’t revisit and others would only revisit on a Groupon deal or similar (I’d put myself in the later camp). This wasn’t because it was a bad meal or poor service, but it’s on a busy street with lots of competition and there are other restaurants that would be preferred.
I opted for the Chilli Beans Spinach Bowl. This was aromatic and flavoursome without too much heat. Described as slow-cooked butter beans, wilted spinach, feta, pickled peppadew, toasted sourdough and chilli oil, this was velvety-textured, unctuous mix. The toasted sourdough provided the perfect foil the butter beans mixture. It was enough food, but not the most filling portion.