The staff are fantastic, the service is great, the restaurant is spotless and the overall…read moreexperience is lovely.
However the food was a bit of a let down: I've never tasted such sweet, luridly coloured food in my life, and that's coming from someone who currently lives in America!
The Hublet and I were over from the USA and visting my family. Do bear in mind that my Mum's side of the family are Eurasion - my Nana is Burmese and my Mum was born in Assam - therefore spicy food has been a companion from infancy.
Having spent the day bimbling around the South coast, we were exhausted and car crazy but hungry. We debated driving a little further into either Buckingham or Milton Keynes to eat at somewhere tried and tested, however the group voted to find somewhere closer in Brackley.
Chilli & Pepper was the first Indian restaurant we saw and therefore it won.
Two of our party had the Set Meal B (for 2 persons) while two of us ordered à la carte.
The Set Meal B included:
1x Chicken Chat: very tasty.
1x Sheek Kebab: very tasty.
2x Papadoms: standard and the accompanying dips were great.
1x Chicken Tikka Balti: a lurid pinky-red coloured curry. Overly sweet, no real spice to it and quite bland.
1x Lamb Tikka Massala: again oddly unnaturally coloured and although tasty, was quite bland.
1x Pilau rice: standard
1x Nan: declared to be delicious
1x Sag Aloo: declared to be tasty.
Items ordered à la carte:
2x Papadoms: standard but we agreed that the dips were great, including a really nice pickle.
1x Peshwari Nan: this was actually delicious, with honey used to sweeten the bread.
2x Pilau rice: standard but nicely cooked
1x (Chefs Recommendation) Lamb Badam Pasanda: this needs its own line as it was my dish.
1x (House Specialities) Chicken Tikka Massla: so sweet that the America described it to seem as if he was eating crushed Fruit Loop cereal.
Chefs recommendation Lamb Badam Pasanda. Cooked with yoghurt, herbs and a nutty, creamy sauce.
This dish was really sweet and was an unnatural pinky red colour, like so many of the other dishes. Also, bizarrely, there was a fat happy little maraschino cherry in my curry, which seems to be a cheat way to add a 'nutty' amaretto flavour to food instead of using ground almonds.
Forgive me if I've been away from the UK so long that I've fallen behind on restaurant customs and cherries have become a Indian restaurant staple, but I've never, ever found a cherry in any 'nutty' curry before, and I'm a huge Korma fan.
I cannot fault the staff as the service was outstanding, friendly and prompt. However, the food seemed bland, overly sweet and unnaturally coloured. We all felt that it seemed to be Indian food that had been simplified for non-Indian palates.
Once again, I cannot fault the staff as they were wonderful, the restaurant was very nice to dine in, with soft lighting, nice decorations and comfortable seating, however this will not my first choice for a curry when I'm next on this side of The Pond.
