I guess that if Tesco sold it under the Chalice brand they would have to price match ASDA where it is 20 pence cheaper, that's why I do most of my shopping at ASDA, better value.

I think this article is spot on with some of my experiences back in the early eighties, I used to stay weekends in east london with a couple of my mates at uni and we would reguarly end up in Brick Lane at 4.00 a.m. pissed out off our minds, give the waiters crap and have a meal for five to seven quid, but next day would pay the price , I have never ordered a Phall in my life but it is safe to say the Madras  I was served would blow your arse of the next morning and we would end up with our heads out the car window next lunchtime on the way back to leafy Hertfordshire, be it down market Stevenage.
 However all that said this Guy smacks of jealousy, just because other cuisines are overpriced and traditionaly so, he feels that he has to charge ridiculous prices and justifies it with the fresh quality produce label, he has obviously moved on from the cheap council estate punters that most of us were or are, and now caters for the sort of people who spend more on high quality unbleached third world ethecally sourced co operative produced toilet paper than we do on a curry and good luck to him , you know we have a curry house here in Pattaya Thailand that charges more for a curry than your average restuarant in the UK, they printed a recipe book last year and I went to buy it , it cost 23 quid in a country where the average daily wage is 4 quid, I looked through it and they apparently cook everything from scratch, no base sauce , needless to say I have never eaten there or purchased the book, however the owner is a millionare and I'm not.

Your right Phil, it is easier to shop here in Farang friendly Pattaya point taken, as I mentioned if you do get to visit there is a small Indian shop next door to the Sikh temple Soi 17 just off 2nd rd, they stock Mango powder, garam masala and sometimes the ready mixed boxes of tandoori masala along with big bags of basmati rice and cans of ghee they also stock other ingredients that are hard or expensive to come by like green and brown cardamons and Indian bay leaf , no mint though, I have seen it fresh in Foodland as well as in those small expensive jars, have you thought about drying it and grinding it yourself as it should work out a lot cheaper, also there is a similer plant available at the markets that smells and tastes a lot like mint  maybe you could use it as a substitute.

Regards...........Gary

Hi Jerry, palm oil is the cheapest and most common cooking oil here in Thailand and so I have been using it in my bases and cooking my curries with it for years, it does have a more intense yellow colour than other cooking oils but is just a standard cooking oil and has no really strong taste,  there is also a red palm oil that is used for cooking which has a red colour but I have not come accross it here, is that the oil that you have seen in the shops? 

I don't think that I ever tasted a recipe close to a BIR CTM until I found the Lorrydoo one on this forum , the tomato soup was the taste that every other recipe was missing for me , it's like a Korma without the cocconut where I come from, it's just not the same, though I will admit that maybe there are regional differences, I tried a chicken chasni recipe from here and it was so sickly sweet that I am sure that I was doing something wrong, then again any country that batters and fries Mars bars has a sweet tooth.