A bloody good indian

As Tonica headed south, the Farmer called to see if there was any room at the inn. The Farmer, aka R's oldest friend (in longevity, not age) lives in NSW but often pops over this way for work. We love the Farmer, (particularly when he kindly brings gifts of an iron and mandarins), so we welcomed him with open arms. And last nite he very kindly took us out for dinner. I fancied Indian food and so we headed to Punjab, (J and T's fave Indian restaurant in the whole of Perth) and after our meal last nite, I concur. It's in an odd location, on a retail park next to Subway in Innaloo (hee, hee, Innaloo) but don't let that put you off. We've been to the Cinnamon Club, our local Indian previously. Admittedly my review of that meal was somewhat influenced by the air con being turned on full blast directly above my head towards the end of the evening when they clearly wanted us to leave; the loud party of people celebrating Christmas in June (noooo, i'm not making it up, yessss, this is a real something that people here do); and R's tipsy-ness from after-work drinks making it very difficult for him to select wine and choose his dishes, BUT, aside from all that, the food wasn't that great and the saag aloo was ridiculously hot, which i've never, ever experienced before. i wouldn't describe myself as a chilli wimp so i don't mind hot(ish) dishes but i wouldn't have thought a saag aloo is meant to be spicy and it ruined the flavour for us. We've also been to the Two Fat Indians restaurant in Mount Lawley. This was not only a grease-fest with most of the dishes full of oil, but we were somehow duped into getting the banquet for 4 (don't worry, there were 4 of us - we weren't that duped) which meant dishes we didn't really want and lots of leftover food (which obviously i doggybagged up and ate the next day for lunch, grease and all).

Anyway, back to last night. Once we'd got over the awkwardness of the waitress not understanding my wine request (i first got brought a bottle of stella and then a glass of red wine, before the correct drink came), we ordered poppadoms, lentil daal, chicken jalfrezi and lamb madras with rice, peshwari and plain naan. I think our main beef with the indian restaurants in Perth is that they don't do curries like in the UK (not that i'm after a vindaloo or anything you understand) but there are a lot of good indian restaurants and here, it's not so much of an institution. There are a lot of Thai restaurants, Malaysian, Indonesian, but not so much Indian. Having a curry at Punjab however was like being back in the UK. The flavours were superb and spice levels as we expected from mild on the daal, upping it on the Jalfrezi and then hotter for the Madras. Too often curries have small cubes of over cooked dried chicken but none of that shit here. They use free range Mount Barker chicken in all their dishes (that would be in all the chicken dishes, not all the dishes, fear not vegetarians) and it showed. And you could tell that the vegetables were all fresh too (which worryingly isn't always the case in restaurants - my memory specifically recalls a very bad meal at an Indian restaurant in Kettering in 2006 with frozen spinach and tinned mushrooms). My only mild niggle was that the peshwari was slightly too sweet. But other than that, the food was amazing and there were no leftovers for me to bring home! 3 cheers for the Punjab!