Delight your taste buds at the Curry Leaf

A visit to the Curry Leaf, in the Cocoa Bean centre, 9 Sixth Avenue, Northmead, is truly a delight.

The traditional homestyle West Indian cooking is the cornerstone of the restaurant’s almost four years of success.

Run by Jackie and Aasha Budhia, the relaxed, Indian-style ambience of the restaurant is welcoming and invites you to settle down for a special meal.

Assisted by waiters Max Mainga and Themba Rakadzi, the Curry Leaf is a family business with various family members helping out, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights, or when needed.

First we selected the starters — we finally settled on homemade lamb samoosas (four) and the spicy papadums.

And then dithered between the mouth-watering chicken, lamb, vegetarian (there is a wide selection of vegetarian meals and Aasha keeps a strict vegetarian policy with separate cooking utensils for vegetarian and vegan meals), seafood and bunny chow dishes.

We finally chose the chicken biryani (deboned chicken cooked with lentils, vegetables, rice and served with a traditional blended yoghurt sauce) and the curry leaf lamb (deboned lamb and potato cooked in a spicy curry leaf, mint, yoghurt gravy.

Both were pronounced delicious as we savoured the flavours and swapped mouthsful.

Good news for those diners who love to sample a selection of meals is that the restaurant will soon introduce a new menu (with all the old favourites and a wide selection) offering tapas-sized meals for sit down diners, giving the option to taste and share a variety of taste bud-tickling meals without having to deny oneself a taste of this and that.

Curry Leaf is licensed and also offers takeaways. HG