Gurkha Village

24-26 Cricklade Road, Swindon SN2 8AA. Tel: 01793 431700

RECOMMENDING a restaurant is a tricky business. On the one hand you want all your nearest and dearest to experience the culinary Xanadu you swear by; on the other you end up building up said Xanadu and set your friends up for disappointment.

Being trusting and possibly foolish, I followed a recommendation to ‘try, try, try’ Gurkha Village in Gorse Hill. It had been so robustly sold, how could I say no?

Due to catch up with a friend and gossip to our hearts’ content, we needed a quietish yet warm place with as much unpretentious food as we could eat between snippets of news. According to my sources, it would fit the bill perfectly.

The decor was more minimalistic and sparse than I had hoped for, but the attentive staff’s warm welcome and a glimpse at the door which touted the restaurant’s Wednesday special offer – any starter, main, vegetable side dish and rice or Naan bread for £10.95 — went some way to redirect my attention.

I must admit that between our eagerness to catch up and the sheer size of the menu we were getting distracted.

But our waiter, who clearly had the patience of a saint, let us take our sweet time before offering a few of his own suggestions.

I needn’t have worried as it turned out that ‘any’ starter and main was a slight exaggeration.

My eyes drifted to a part of the menu which ended up being out of bounds for the Wednesday night deal.

On his advice, I ordered the Mo Mo (£3.95), delicious stuffed lamb and vegetable parcels reminiscent of Chinese dim sum but with distinctively East Indian – as I saw it – aromas.

My dining companion opted for Lamb Choila (£3.95), somewhat peculiar-looking roasted Lamb mince with spring onions, tomatoes, peppers and spices.

But despite its unusual appearance, the fragrant starter was a winner.

The main would be the real test. You see, there are two types of restaurants for me: those which offer real prawns, and the rest, where miniature crustaceans are passed off as their distant cousins.

So in the interest of research I ordered the intriguing Gurkha Prawn (£7.95) with spinach – that’s as much as the description volunteered.

The dish turned out to be a light, fragrant curry with generous servings of spinach peppered with delightfully potent coriander, but with microscopic and dull ersatz prawns hidden beneath the spinach leaves.

My fast plummeting mood as I dished out the sorry ‘prawns’ was lifted slightly by the colourful and satisfyingly spicy mushroom rice.

My friend’s Gurkha Lamb, pieces of meat in tikka sauce prepared in what he was led to believe would be ‘richly spiced tomatoes and red wine and topped with fresh cream and cashews nuts’ did not live up to the hype of his starter.

All in all, it was a bland and pale imitation of an Indian korma.

The bill, which came to £29 with drinks and an extra £2 for my prawns – a small price to pay but a blow given the weak prawn concentration – went some way to cheer us up.

We left suitably full but in no rush to return or venture a recommendation to anyone.

As much as I love discovering new foodie havens, I may take others’ rave reviews with a pinch of salt in future.