[Bramhall, Greater Manchester] Bombay to Mumbai

Regional Dining Discussions U.K., Ireland
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It’s some months since we last ate here but we were welcomed back as though we were regulars. That typifies the hospitality that Sandeep and his colleagues offer to customers. The restaurant is just coming up to its first anniversary and it was good to see them so busy on a Sunday evening. It’d be fair to say that they seemed a bit stretched and there were a couple of hiccoughs - wrong drink order, for example. Nothing that would interfere with the enjoyment of good food – and it is good food. Really good food.

I’ve eaten the Sharabi Chicken before as a starter. It’s an absolute belter. Moist meat, lots of fried onion and chilli. Google tells me that sharabi means alcohol and, interestingly for an Indian restaurant, the dish is finished with white wine. The other starter was masala dosa. It’s everything you want from a dosa – crisp pancake, spicy potato filling, lovely coconut chutney and a light vegetable sambar.

For mains, we both went down the vegetarian route. Aloo gobi was a good version of the classic. The quantities of both potato and cauliflower were well balanced and perfectly cooked so both retained a little bite to them. Very clingy sauce which was nicely rounded with no spice particularly dominating. The use of chilli was particularly well considered – yes, it was there giving a good kick but not overwhelming other spices or the vegetables. Barli Vanga is one of many dishes on the menu from Sandeep’s home state of Maharashtra. Baby aubergines come cooked in a really delicious sauce that includes the savouriness of peanuts and slight background sweetness from jaggery. It’s a very Indian sauce, nothing like the sweetish peanut satay sauce you might get in a Malaysian restaurant. The only minor issue I had with the dish is that, with the aubergines being fully cooked, they sort of collapsed into the sauce so there was no texture to it. I’m sure that’s how it’s supposed to be and it did mean it was all very easy to scoop up with the excellent naan and equally good rice. Sandeep told us that there’s a new menu coming in a couple of weeks and he’s going to offer the sauce with chicken and lamb. It’ll be a winner and we’ll be back soon to try it.
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i can almost taste those aubergines! :slight_smile:

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The owner responded to my post on Tripadvisor saying that the aubergines are supposed to be that soft

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I’m really pleased to report that Bombay to Mumbai has made it into the just published Good Food Guide. Great recognition for a place only a year old.

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When you’ve been to a restaurant several times, it can be hard to think of new nice things to say about it. So, I’ll just say it continues to offer the excellent food and service that it’s done whenever we’ve eaten here. This visit was with friends but I’m only mentioning the food the two of us ate. We were quickly into the mini poppadums. Single bite discs – the size of a 50p – topped with onion, tomato and chilli. And there’s four chutneys – raita, mango, a spicy bright green coriander one and another very spicy pickle. Went well with drinks while we looked at the menu.

It’s a short menu compared with many Asian restaurants – just 15 or so main courses, half of them vegetarian. That’s a good thing – you know the kitchen is concentrating on doing everything well. But it’s also a good thing that, fairly recently, they introduced a “special of the week” for a bit of variety. The current special was an interesting sort of East meets West starter. Chicken, finely diced carrot and spring onion, Indian spices (with a really nice chilli hit) but topped with mozzarella which had had been heated through so it became stringy, like it might on a pasta dish. Really good. The other starter was bhel puri. Now, that’s a dish that’s often served up looking like a bowl of breakfast cereal but here it’s quite an elegant affair, served as a pyramid. Of course, the pyramid lasts seconds as you dive in. We’ve said before that this is the best bhel puri we’ve eaten – it’s a good mix of textures and flavours. My partner thought there was more chilli in it than on previous occasions. I wasn’t so sure but, even if there was, then it was an improvement!

We both went with lamb as main dishes. One the lamb chamku, with it’s clingy sauce and earthiness from beetroot. The other was the more often seen lamb saagwala, with its thick almost puree like spinach sauce. We’ve eaten both of these here before and they continue to be excellent although the spicing in both seemed a little muted in comparison with previous. It made us wonder if, perhaps, they have a new chef who is cooking things slightly differently. Alongside, we had pahadi daal – like the more familiar daal makhani, but without the cream so, for our tastes, better.

Sandeep also brought us a sample of something not on the menu – aloo methi. Just thinly sliced potato topped with fresh fenugreek (methi) leaves. I can’t recall eating the fresh leaves before and they have an unusual flavour, slightly sweet, slightly celery like. And Google tells me it has health benefits – lowering cholesterol and boosting testosterone. Must look out for it more often!

Carbs, in the form of pilau rice and roti, were spot on.

We had eaten well so there was no room for dessert – which was, perhaps, a pity as I’ve really enjoyed the kulfi falooda in the past. But there’ll be another time for sure.

By the by, they have a new slogan - “Mumbai is a city. Bombay is an emotion”. Figure that one out.

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Morning John

Great review to get me fancying that kind of food at this hour!
As to that slogan, I think it’s like the well known Scouse saying “City got three, but we got The One” :slight_smile:

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Ah, please let it be City 3 - Scouse teams 0 - for all four matches.

I’m not a Geordie but I still reckon Newcastle had the best ever football song. To the tune of the Kinks “Lola”…

“We’ve got the world’s most fanatical fans. And we’ve also got Les Ferdinand. And Ginola. G- G-G- Ginola.”

By the by, Bombay to Mumbai is probably just about worth the drive from Scouseland.

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