Kamal, Newcastle

Kamal

279 Stanhope St, Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 5JU

(0191) 226 1726

www.kamalrestaurant.co.uk

Kamal is located in Newcastle's Inner West End, a bare 15 minute walk from the city centre. It is an area where, over the past 50 years or so, the Asian community has very much made its home, with Stanhope Street one of its main commercial centres.

The restaurant has been a fixture here for some time, but underwent a minor transformation in recent years when what was originally a pair of restaurants both called Komal (the other is near West Jesmond Metro station), was divided with the sale of the Stanhope Street restaurant. It's new owners made the subtle name change though little else appears to have changed.

Inside, Kamal is cooly contemporary but with a traditional flavour, bright, comfortable and rather smart but with informal touches. For example, they dispense with elaborate linen table cloths and set places directly onto dark wooden tables.

We found Kamal busy on a Sunday night with a clientele made up fairly equally between young Europeans and Asian families, which we took as a good sign.

We dived straight into the menu and quickly found a whole page of vegetarian appetisers with no less than 11 different vegetarian dishes on offer – a good start.

We selected aloo chana on puri and the pakora platter for two, a sharing plate consisting of thick rings of aubergine and button mushrooms dipped in spicy batter and fried, along with chunks of vegetable pakora and vegetable samosas accompanied by a minty yoghurt. The platter was delicious and easily sufficient for two, with each item perfectly cooked. However, the aloo chana on puri was even more impressive, a towering mound of chick peas and potato in a rich and superbly-flavoured sauce piled onto a soft and fluffy puri.

Vegetarians are well catered for elsewhere on the menu, too. There is a Vegetable Balti menu offering no less than 10 different choices, plus a choice of 12 traditional curry house dishes – what they call 'Old School Favourites” - offering a vegetable option, plus a vegetable karahi dish which is part-cooked in the tandoor and finished off on the hob, plus 11 vegetable side dishes.

Two of our party decided to explore the Balti menu, choosing paneer and pea balti with a nut pillau, and a simple paneer balti with chana pillau. I chose to go down the Old School route and chose one of my favourites, vegetable dupiaza accompanied by a vegetable pillau.

The paneer balti was gorgeous, with large chunks of soft paneer in a hot and fragrant sauce well-laced with chunks of green chilli - this demanded caution on the part of the diner but the chilli was easy to spot and to move to one side. The pea and paneer balti was a little lighter on the spice but every bit as delicious, with the nut pillau declared 'the best I have ever tasted'. The vegetable dupiaza was equally good, not too dry and with loads and loads of flavour. What had impressed me about the old Komal was the way you could almost taste each individual spice in a dish because the flavour was so clean and well-balanced. It's good to find that this is still the case.

A word about the pillau. If the nut pillau scored 10 out of 10, then the channa pillau and my own vegetable pillau were right up there, too. Deceptively plain in appearance, I could almost have eaten the vegetable pillau just on its own with a tarka dahl for sauce. In fact, we did order tarka dahl and that, too, garnered huge praise from our party, along with the nan bread which was beautifully light and fluffy.

There was a slight mix-up at the end of the meal when the bill arrived before we'd had a chance to order dessert. In fact, we'd eaten ourselves into a corner but had been looking forward to a cup of tea to finish. When he realised what had happened, our waiter was hugely apologetic and quickly delivered two cups of milky chai and a peppermint tea - generously declining to add them to our bill.

Kamal have a small range of fruit juices and soft drinks, and they also serve lassi, and will happily keep you topped up with jugs of tap water free of charge, but they do not have a licence to serve alcohol (their choice). They will, however, point you in the direction of a nearby shop selling beer and wine and will supply glasses on request.

Not that you will need a stiff drink to enjoy a visit to Kamal. If any restaurant has got the balance right between the quality of the décor, the standard of service and the quality of the food, then Kamal is it. We could find nothing to fault with our evening here – the quickly-rectified problem with the bill aside - and much to praise. The vegetarian menu is extensive, portion size is generous and the food itself is some of the best Asian food I have tasted.

I'm told the word Kamal is Urdu for 'perfection'. If so, then it's a wholly appropriate choice for this restaurant.