It was a cool night in February and we were looking forward to a hot meal as we headed along London Road for our reservation at Shimla Pinks. We were lucky and had managed to find a parking space on London Road, about fifty metres from the reataurant, but parking can be a problem at busy times, which is most of the time along there!

It was a Wednesday evening and it was pleasing to see that the restaurant was fairly busy and another reservation was arriving at the same time as us. We were shown to our table and having ordered our drinks, they weren’t long in arriving, shortly followed by poppadoms and a couple of relish trays.

Our meal order consisted of a Chilli Paneer and Lamb Chops starter portions to be served together as one main dish, two Chicken Biriyanis, one Madras and one Vindaloo strength, one Lamb Tawa and one Lamb Chattinad. We had one Mushroom Rice, one Cheese and Chilli Nan, one Tandoori Nan and one Peshwari Nan to accompany the mains.

The only adverse comment from our gang of five was that the Lamb Chops were a little dry, but other than that we were all very impressed and pleased with the flavours and tender meat in the dishes all served from an open style theatre kitchen allowing a clear view of the busy chefs preparing the dishes for our pleasure.

The restaurant is spacious with comfortable, well laid out seating, but it could do with a little refurbishment of the décor. Having remarked upon that, it was clean and tidy, the service was good and you wouldn’t be embarrassed taking your partner there, or maybe someone elses partner even, for a very enjoyable meal.

The other comment from one member was that it was a little pricey, which could be accounted for by the 10% service charge which was added to the bill when it was presented. It does mention this on the menu though and qualifies it as being discretional, but as we normally leave a tip it didn’t matter that much anyway.