Regards is an Indian restaurant situated in the suburb of Edgbaston. It lies in a small square off the main road, and is in good company, as also on this Square is Waters on the Square – which we are yet to eat at, but I’m assured is an excellent fine dining restaurant.
We were warmly greeted by the host and shown to our seats, poppadums were offered and accepted (not free – you pay by the poppadom) so don’t order too many! On a side note here – how do you actually spell ‘poppadum’? I see a different variant on every menu I look at! They were nice and crisp and came with traditional accompaniments.
So what did we eat? My husband started with the Chatpati Aloo (£3.95) – Potatoes in spices, chopped onion and tomato sauce. He really enjoyed this – a sweet, slight spicy sauce and crunchy cubed potatoes. A bit like an Indian version of the Spanish classic Patatas Bravas. My starter was the Hara Bara Kebab (£3.95) - Deep green fried patties made of lightly spiced spinach and lentils stuffed with cheese. I’m not sure what I expected from this, but when it arrived it didn’t look the most appetising…
It lacked spicing and flavor for me, and the cheese was on top and not ‘stuffed’ inside like the description.
For mains we ordered from the ‘Chefs Exclusive’ section of the menu and shared them with some Pilau Rice, which was well cooked. The two dishes we chose were the Kori Gassi – Chicken cooked with chef’s own spices imbedded with unique sauce made with ground ingredients: coconut, peanut and sesame seeds, and the Murgh Asamki – Sliced chicken cooked with sliced onion, green peppers, mint, yoghurt with special herbs & spices, both £9.95. We thought both mains were excellent. Chicken was perfectly cooked in both, the minty flavor of the Asamki really lifted the dish and was a fantastic flavour, and the ground nuts and seeds in the Kori Gassi again was something quite different to your typical curry dish. We wolfed both of these down, and our decision of restraint for once not to order bread paid off as we actually finished everything else!
The service throughout was friendly and polite, although the food came out the kitchen pretty slowly. They seemed to be churning out endless takeaways as well that Friday night, a testament to the food perhaps, but possibly impacting a little on the restaurant diners.
On the whole we really enjoyed the food, and think Regards is a decent neighbourhood Indian, one which we would certainly return to, were we local.
http://www.regardsedgbaston.co.uk
Disclosure: We received £25 towards our meal from Regards which cost £43, with 2 beers and 2 soft drinks. We were not required to write a positive review about the experience, all views are honest and our own.