friday night out in london

in an effort to take more advantage of the cool city i live in, as well as to nurture my addiction to curry in a different place (the dudes at cafe saffron know me by name), friday night i headed to brick lane. brick lane is the mecca for curry, and also known as curry vegas. i normally avoid curry vegas because the neon lights are scary and so are the guys standing outside the 100 or so curry restaurants, trying to bribe you inside with discounts and offers of free wine. i've been seduced by the free wine before and well, it was about as good as you'd expect free wine to be, which is not good at all. :-)

however, my roommate Ly recently introduced me to the magic that is toptable.com, and i found a discount at a curry place on brick lane called sheba. i like discounts and i was in the mood for an outing to shoreditch, so off i went into the rain and wind. my summer attire here consists of tights and trench coats...

i knew sheba would be a decent place to eat because the guys out front didn't bother me and they didn't offer me anything free. they did politely thank me for choosing their restaurant. awww. everything was reasonably priced (smaller portions but that's probably for the best) and the saag i had (i get saag at every curry place in order to have a consistent bench mark for ratings) was different that any that i've had in london so far (no two are ever the same). it was well spiced (flavourful, not spicy), not too creamy and not too greasy. perfect. AND i didn't feel overly stuffed when i finished. Adam had the chicken tikka masala, which was decent but i haven't had enough of this in london to benchmark it.

final verdict? i would go back - definitely a safe haven amidst the madness of curry vegas.

since i wasn't stuffed, a pint of beer sounded nice and we decided to finally try the white lion, which is two doors down from me and technically my "local". i have always avoided this place because they have a lot of tvs, hideous curtains, and frosted windows. it looked small and menacing. however, inside is actually more spacious than i thought and it was a really wide mix of people. Adam actually said that the white lion is more of a typical English pub than say, the Kings, or other establishments that i always thought were super authentic! guess i still have lots to learn...


inside the mythical white lion