A breath of Frash air

Sep 6 2007 Restaurant Review by Richard McComb

Al Frash  * * * *
186 Ladypool Road,
Sparkbrook, Birmingham.
Tel: 0121 753 3120.

Walking into a Birmingham balti house a decade ago was an unmistakable experience.

The place was full of pub-crawl students, bearded sociology teachers and white, middle-class social aspirants who couldn't believe that food "this good" could be served "this cheap" in such an edgy locality.

Rice didn't tend to appear on the menu and everyone just seemed to scoop their curry into their mouths on naan bread. How quaint. How authentic!

The tables and chairs were rough hewn, the carpets were red and the wallpaper was flocked. Hunting out the loo was a joy and frequently entailed walking along a narrow corridor and clambering up a higgledypiggledy staircase. The soap was one of those stuck-on-a-metal-stick affairs and looked like an anaemic mango.

How things have changed. Birmingham's balti belt has been rebranded and turned into a "triangle," like Bermuda but without the missing aircraft.

It is now possible to sample a Balti Weekend. There are two tailored-made deals, the Tamarind and Coriander package, to choose from, depending on your budget, skills at curry quizzes and appetite for pakora, tandoori fish and balti chicken tikka.

The atmosphere of relaxed, café-style eating persists but the old restaurant interiors have been ripped out, the interior designers have been called in and 21st century balti chic has been installed. Some people like this modern feel, some still hanker for the woodchip, but you can't please everyone.

What hasn't changed - and the day it does is the day the balti belt loses its soul - is that wonderful "clink, clink" sound you get in these places. Sometimes it's more of a "chink, chink," or a faint, muffled metallic dull thud.
 
Just evoking that sound is enough to make one's mouth water. Such is the clarion call of the contented diner, walking through the door of a balti house armed with his/her bag of booze, the bottles and tinnies jangling inside. There is none of this faffing around with rip-off bar tariffs and wine lists, where you know everything has been hiked by a multiple of at least three to arrive at a price.

In a bring-your-own-drink establishment you can drink whatever you like - beer, cider, wine, sherry, cherry cola, pina coladas - without anyone questioning your taste or your relative wealth.

And so we duly arrived at Al Frash on the Ladypool Road, several bottles of Cobra lager "chink, chinking" in a supermarket carrier bag. There was no hanging around for dumb waiters to take a drinks order and I was glugging away within a minute of sitting down. So, the meal was off to a fine start.

But what of Al Frash, Arabic for The Butterfly? It's one of the best known of the city's balti restaurants and on the basis of the meal we had, its reputation is assured.

We visited a couple of weeks after Al Frash was re-launched in July. Re-launches fill me with dread because they usually mean the previous set-up was ropey, served bad food and was losing money faster than Conrad Black can spend it. Alarm bells should always start ringing when a restaurant re-launches itself as a fusion restaurant, which typically means the boss still hasn't got a clue what he is doing.

Thankfully, the Al Frash re-launch represents a refreshing refit rather than a culinary overhaul. In fact, it looks posh. There are smart, dark-stained wooden tables with very comfortable leather chairs, a wooden floor and clean, light coloured walls with bright, swirly artwork.

We decided to go heavy on the meat and kicked off with lamb chops tikka, which were marinated in masala and then barbecued, and a portion of tandoori chicken. The chicken, marinated in yogurt with herbs and spices, had been sizzled in a charcoal-fired oven and both dishes were spot on for spice and flavour.

I'm a sucker for "chef's specials" and am drawn irresistibly, like an Al Frash-type flapping thing to a flame. I do so in the knowledge that I may well about to be burnt but persist on the basis that, on occasions, I have been richly rewarded. This proved to be the case with the helpful waiter's recommendation that we try the lamb Archar Gosht, a house speciality.

At £6.75, it seemed worth a punt and it turned out to be worth every penny. Incidentally, the same dish served in a city centre French/Thai/Kashmiri fusion restaurant - not that they could cook it - would be at least double the price.

The lamb was cooked in a pickle masala with whole green chillis. It was fragrant with good heat and a delicious thick dark sauce.

The Butter Chicken, another special, contained barbecued meat, ginger and plenty of fresh herbs. A side-order of Balti Dall, containing vegetables, spinach and chick peas was a great green delight. Served with rice and/or bread it would have made a terrific meal in its own right (and it's not often I get that sensation with veggie food).

With some pilau rice and a fluffy great naan, which was the size of an elephant's tongue, we had plenty to eat, having brought along two children for a scoff of midweek curry.

But then I just couldn't get that chef's specials list out of my curry-fogged head. Shouldn't we have another dish, just to try?

Within ten minutes a Garlic Chicken was delivered to our table in another sizzling dish. (How is it that they don't melt?) The fresh garlic and chilli sauce worked well with the barbecued chicken and a good sprinkling of fresh coriander gave it a lift.

The bill, with a couple of lemonades, came to an astonishing £43.50. I can't believe it was that cheap - and that good.