Upstairs, downstairs... it's all good (From Swindon Advertiser)

Upstairs, downstairs... it's all good

3:56pm Thursday 20th October 2011 in Reviews

Open: seven days a week – lunch noon to 2.30pm and evening 6pm to midnight. Extended opening until 1am on Friday and Saturday

The Biplob’s £100,000 revamp has been the talk of the town.

MICHELLE TOMPKINS pays a visit

IF I had a pound for every time someone has mentioned the Biplob’s new upstairs extension recently, I’d be able to buy a chicken tikka massala, some special fried rice and whole pile of poppadoms on the side.

It’s testament to the restaurant’s popularity that everyone has been talking about its revamp in the past few weeks. Certainly, among my circle of friends, if it’s a curry then it’s the Biplob – nowhere else gets a look-in – and the development of the new ‘upstairs bit’ has been the source of some excitement over the summer.

The £100,000 extension opened at the start of this month, in a room created at the back of the old Topdrug store. The front of the old shop will eventually be rented out.

It’s not actually ‘upstairs’ at all – it’s on ground floor level – but anyone who has spent years descending the steep stairs into the depths of the original restaurant will feel they are going up in the world to be seated in the new Balaka Lounge.

The first obvious change is the double glass doors which have replaced that old narrow doorway so often missed by the uninitiated. When I finally got to visit last week, two young women stood inside greeting people as they arrived – a nice little touch, and something you won’t find in any common or garden curry house.

The old downstairs section, with its intimate nooks and crannies, is still there (there are no guarantees you’ll be seated in the new bit), but we were led down a corridor to our table in the gleaming addition.

Owner Rokib Ali has tried to echo the decor of the restaurant everyone knows and loves, so that old regulars don’t feel too alienated. There are similar wood carvings on the walls, for instance, the same dark wood furniture with soft pink decor and the same pristine white tablecoths.

But the new space definitely feels brighter and more airy, altogether more contemporary.

And when I say gleaming, I mean it. The surfaces shine almost as brilliantly as Mr Ali’s smile as he proudly shows customers around his new domain.

The menu, too, has changed very little and that’s a good thing in my book. We tried a selection of the chef’s specials – among them the lamb chakmai (£8.50), the tiger prawn garlic chilli mussalam (£13.95) and the Biplob supreme (chicken breast stuffed with minced lamb in a coconut and cream sauce, £8.95).

The main change to the menu has been the inclusion of more fish, and I selfishly hogged the Goan fish curry (£9.95) with its meaty fillets of white fish in a sharply spicy sauce. I think it has taken the place of chicken tikka jall fraizi as my new Biplob favourite.

It goes without saying I’ll be back to the Biplob. To be honest, I would have been back with or without the extension – me and the rest of Swindon.