I had already chosen this Indian Restaurant in 2020 for my next Leicester Curry Club choice, just before lockdown started and have been following it on Instagram since then. Khyber Nights is tucked away just off Melton Road and not far from the owners original The Khyber – which was one of the originals in Leicester and around for 30 years (See Leicester Mercury here)

Primarily a takeaway Khyber Nights has a few ‘Chefs Tables’ with sittings at 6 pm and 8 pm, although this is flexible. For us midweek, it was almost ‘private dining’. It is fully licensed and has nice cutlery and electric salt and pepper pots – nothing cheap here.

We had the usual popadoms to start. We all would have enjoyed more with some onions/tomatoes; however, the mango chutney was very nice – and they were complimentary, so we cannot complain!

We had 2 Chicken Tawas, Chicken Jalfrezi, Palak Chicken and a Chicken on the bone dish for main courses. The Chicken Tawa dishes were ordered ‘Madras’ hot and my Jalfrezi ‘Vindaloo or hotter’ – and they did not miss the heat! They had genuine hotness to them rather than simply more chilli powder and had us sweating!

Rice and Naan were as ordered and good.

The service and presentation were excellent. The bill was £115 for the five (£23 per head average).

Overall excellent scores of 8s and 8.5s; difficult being the first this year for scoring, but a genuine high bar has been set, which should be hard to beat.

I think we all look forward to returning and will be ordering take away too.