I was in Dorset a few weeks back having a lovely time. Just me and the other half, doing what you and the other halves do when given the chance for a mini break, which is mostly roll around complaining of eating too much and catching up on sleep. There was views. Views for days. And cider. Loads of cider. Flat cider and fizzy cider and cloudy cider and slightly pissy smelling cider. A bad curry, you gotta have that bad curry. And hilly walks and pastries filled with local pigs, which differ from the local pigs in Birmingham who just sit squealing whilst I’m trying to eat my fucking pizza and drink my negroni without my eardrums bursting. Lovely time anyway, drinking, moaning and eating. We ate one night in the local pub that had one of those menus which promised the world; schnitzel with a burford brown so orange it applied for Love Island, local crab salad, risotto using veg from two-doors-up-the-roads back garden. It was shit. So shit that we were laughing to each other in that kind of sarcastic “this is going to cost us a ton” way when they overheard us. Two minutes later and a manager is explaining to us about the change of chefs and refunding the lot. I can’t write about it anymore. It’s null and void. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you silence a prick like me.

Compare that to Indi-go which can be found in the doldrums of Selfridges by Ed’s thingy thingy diner and Hi! It’s sushi!. We ate and there was some mediocre stuff and some not great stuff and the mattar paneer that was so bad it got passed around six people when I returned it before they offered a free chai for my uneaten fifteen pound dish, a further four more before they offered a replacement, and two more before I got offered a fifteen quid refund which turned up thirty minutes later mostly in pound coins. I walked away, pockets bulging like a kid selling tuk-tuk sweets thinking ‘fuck it, I’m telling both my readers’.

And so Dear Reader, if you avoid the braised onion mush with tomato, a hint of cumin, a splash of double cream, todays paneer and last week peas you’ll have a slightly passable meal. The best bit is the katti roll, a viable lunch open in this part of Brum. Slightly undercooked onions and peppers with slightly overcooked chicken which is at least in the correct order, bound in a wrap that might have come from a packet in a sauce that might have come from a jar. There’s a chole bhature – one of my favourites – with a passable chole that’s fragrant with tea and bitter with burnt spice. The bhature is at best from a packet or worst just cooked days ago, whilst a side order of chips so forgettable they’ve renamed it Kier, but hey, it’s least its not the mattar paneer. And yes, that voter analogy was deliberate. I’m fucking good at this.


The bill with drinks is circa fifty quid minus the pocket full of change, making this place, well, instantly forgettable. On the upside our dining room has a ceramic Narwhal money bank for which we put all coins into for nice meals when we feel we probably shouldn’t have nice meals. It’s just hit enough to pay for Harborne Kitchen with fine wine pairings thanks to a £15 coin dump. I expect to report back with much better findings
5/10
Listen to The Meat and One Veg Podcast here