North East Veggie Curry

358 Westgate Rd,  Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 6NU 0191 272 4937 luigikhans.co.uk You'd be excused for being puzzled by the name, but if you'd leapt to the conclusion that this was some kind of fusion of Indian and Italian cuisine then you wouldn't be far wrong. At least, that was the original idea. Luigikhans used to be a restaurant which offered a unique (as far as I can tell) fusion of Italian and Indian food, with these two entirely separate and unrelated food traditions often served on the same plate (curry with black olives, anyone...?). Unsurprisingly, this turned out to be just a step too far for most diners so now Luigikhans, while keeping its unusual name, has settled on a wholly Punjabi menu, and seems to be thriving. The restaurant is housed on the ground floor of the Ryokan Hotel, a grade 2-listed stub of what must once have been a rather grand early Victorian terrace on Westgate Road just a short walk from the city centre. What in more

25 Queen Street,  Newcastle upon Tyne  NE1 3UG (0191) 232 7799 www.uryrestaurants.com Newcastle's Queen Street is tucked away just off the Quayside partly beneath the vast and imposing Tyne Bridge. Oddly, this is a street which has traditionally had a reputation for fine dining with some surprisingly bold and upmarket offerings on offer. This is where I first discovered Rasa, part of a small national chain of quality South Indian restaurants which gave me my first taste of Keralan cooking. It made a huge impression.  In recent years, Rasa floated off its Newcastle restaurant as a stand-alone with a new name - Ury. Little else is new, however; the restaurant, the staff and much of the menu seem to be the same and this is definitely 'a good thing'. As Rasa, this was one of my all-time favourite Tyneside restaurants. As Ury, I'm pleased to report that my opinions are no different. I do need to confess to a problem, though. Now I'm as inquisit

206 - 210 Ocean Road, South Shields, NE33 2JQ (0191) 456 1811 www.zeeracuisine.com For some years now, Ocean Road in South Shields has had a reputation as a great destination for curry fans, thanks to its large number of mostly Indian restaurants lining both sides of the street. It has heritage in abundance; the north east's very first Indian restaurant, the Anglo Asian, opened here in 1958 and there’s been a cluster of restaurants here ever since. With little personal experience of the South Shields curry scene, I decided to ask around and took to the internet in search of recommendations for restaurants to review. There was no shortage of recommendations, but one name that kept cropping up time and again was Zeera so we decided to take a closer look. The auspices were rather good. Although the menu seemed a little light on veggie choices, Zeera boasted something which I haven’t found anywhere else – a specifically vegan menu featuring 5 hot starters,

The Last Days of the Raj Main Road, Dinnington Newcastle upon Tyne (01661) 598181 http://lastdaysoftheraj.co.uk It's unusual for a restaurant to up-sticks, gather up its pans and move lock, stock and karahi to the next town, but that's exactly what The Last Days of the Raj did in 2015. This previously well-respected and popular Gateshead restaurant decided to forsake Low Fell and re-locate to a former mining village on the northern outskirts of Newcastle.  Their new restaurant in the village of Dinnington is a substantial, stone-built affair, the classic English village pub exuding an attractive old-world charm. It certainly looks inviting, so perhaps this wasn't such a strange move after all. Inside, it's clear that whatever they may have left behind in the move, they clearly didn't forget their slightly old-fashioned panache to which their Gateshead customers had grown accustomed. Theirs was the only Indian restaurant I'd ever vi

New New Bengal 232 High St, Newcastle upon Tyne NE3 1HH 0191 285 6706 newnewbengal.com The curiously-named New New Bengal on Gosforth's High Street has an interesting history. A familiar local landmark (there's been a restaurant here since at least the 1970's), the then-named New Bengal leapt to prominence late one night in September 2014 when a passer-by reported that the restaurant was ablaze – like, 'flames raging out of the front of the building' sort of ablaze. You might have thought that was curtains for the New Bengal but the owners clearly had other ideas and f rom the ashes of the old sprang a new Indian restaurant, this time with a cool, modern and obviously very new interior and with a name that seemed to capture it all perfectly – yes, it was the New Bengal, but it was new. It was, in fact, the New New Bengal. We decided we had to try this unusually-named restaurant for ourselves so we duly booked a table for five

Dosa Kitchen Rear of 7 Osborne Road, Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 2AE www.dosakitchenuk.co.uk  /  dosakitchenuk@gmail.com The UK's love of Indian street food shows little sign of abating, so I suppose it was only a question of time before a restaurant specialising in dosas opened in Newcastle. In fact Dosa Kitchen, the latest entrant into the Jesmond food scene, was already operating in the city as a pop-up restaurant in Newcastle's West End – during which time it had garnered some praise. It's move to permanent premises has therefore been greeted with some interest. The restaurant itself is in the former Longhorns Smokehouse tucked away in a lane behind Osborne Road and is an open airy loft on the first floor, with exposed beams and a simple, spartan interior of plain wooden furniture, wooden floors and distressed timber cladding on the walls. It's informality is appealing and matches the menu admirably. It's worth noting that Dosa Kitc