Mounds of great food keep KATHERINE MACALISTER and family eating for a week after a curry house visit and a half

Yusaf, the owner of Mehfil in Bicester, was regaling with us with his experiences of other local curry houses, which in turn encouraged him to open so many of his own from Carterton to Grove.

He tells me about about a particularly bad meal in a restaurant which shall remain nameless, where he called the chef to task: “My curry was very oily, but when the chef asked what was wrong with it, I asked if he wanted the English answer or the Pakistani answer – the English answer being ‘nothing’ and then never returning, and the Pakistani answer being the truth,” he laughs.

Taking this on board, and hoping for as many revisits as possible, Mehfil opened in June last year, with head chef Shamsul Hoque from the Aziz, in the kitchens. It’s an enormous venue, catering to the masses with a big schedule of tribute nights to enjoy, mehfil meaning ‘gathering’. I’m told Elvis is a particular favourite and often sells out – who can say no to a curry and a man in a spangly jumpsuit?

In fact, The King would be right at home in the white futuristic interior, with its Athena style steel sculptures erupting out of the paintings and glitzy lights. Service is paramount here, the staff being friendly, polite, and nothing being too much trouble. The customer comes first, and it’s enormously reassuring. But all this is the warm-up act to the real event – the food, and we went really overboard and ordered far more than we could eat.

The starter platter itself boasted everything from vegetable pakoras (£2.95) to garlic mushrooms (£3.15) and whetted our appetites sufficiently for the feast that was to follow. We had king prawns known as aagni konna ruposhi (£14.95), royal honey duck with strawberries (£10.95), lamb shanks marathani, which you have to order in advance, gremeen khana chicken (£7.95), aubergine gujarati, (£6.95) sag samber, navrattan vegetable mix (£6.95) and onion fried rice (£2.95), plus a meaty cheese panjabi naan (£4.95), (known as Punjabi pizza) and peshwari (£2.95).

I know! We ploughed on through the succulent lamb cooked on the bone, the giant king prawns, the delicately flavoured sag and the heavenly naans. The chicken was a bit bitter for our palates and the veg rather mild, but they were probably just being careful, spice factor always being toned down for cowardly Westerners.

Despite eating as hard as possible, we still had mounds of food left, which were then dispatched into enormous doggy-bags and fed the whole family for the rest of the week.

We couldn’t take home the delicious mango and pistachio kulfi ice creams (£2.50) which finished off our meals perfectly, and as manager Mohammad Patwary, known as Mizan, bid us farewell, we knew there was no need for Yusaf’s advice because we had nothing to complain about.

  • Mehfil is at 35 Market Square, Bicester. Call 01869 601154 or 01869 324968