I now have a Raja Monkey by my house, replacing the awful Estado Da India via a super quick refit of the space that sees the Goan wall mural staying put along with some of the staff. Estado never worked for numerous reasons but mostly because the Portuguese/Indian wording of the concept felt blurred when southern Indian would have been suffice, the portions were too small and too expensive, and the food itself veered from quite good to fairly horrific. Replacing it with an established brand of the Lasan group empire seems an easy fix. Plus it’s nigh on impossible to make it as bad as it previously was.

We sit on the two tables that make up the terrace and order rosè. It’s hot. Really hot. And the weather means the idea of curry right now isn’t an appealing one. Whilst considering the options we get papads, really good papads, with a nondescript dipping sauce that could be anything. And another glass of rosè, because it’s hot.
The four dishes we do get are a mixed-bag, but the lunch leaves me confident that in time I’ll be able to craft a good feed out of here. I think it’ll be the chicken tikka that’s bold in its use of chilli and ginger, wrapped in a garlic naan that’s supple and fragrant. And it will certainly include the black dhaal, which I’d go so far to say is better than the version at Dishoom, being a smokey, buttery, densely flavoured bowl of comfort.


It won’t feature the lamb samosas, essentially a mouthful of pastry – some cooked, the inner layers raw – with hardly any meat and a few overcooked peas. Nor will I bother with the samosa chaat that not only suffers from similar, albeit vegetarian, issues with the pastry thickness. The chickpea curry feels a bit one-note and the textures aren’t quite there.

The bill is just thirty quid a head and the portion sizes feel generous. This Raja Monkey is a different menu to the one in Hall Green, as it should be, given that site exists as a kind of posh curry house. This is far more varied and more in keeping with the dishes Harborne needs at present. I quite liked it. It’s certainly an upgrade on its predecessor.
7/10
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