In a moment of madness I went to a curry house near my hotel called "light of india" on gloucester road.  The garlic nan was the only good thing I ate.  The madras was watery and lacked any depth of flavour and the service was poor.  Definitely one to avoid!

I'm back down with work in a few weeks so if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears.  It may save me another bad experience... Thanks!

I joined years ago as I loved BIR food and wanted to make a curry at home.  In the years before joining I had half heartedly tried my hand at this (cookery books, recipes from a friend of a friend who apparently worked at a BIR) with zero success.

I had heard a base sauce was important, but had know idea where to start.

I stumbled across this website, and to access the base sauces you had to join - so i did.  I spent weeks pouring over all the posts going years back.  Had a go at a few recipes.  They weren't great (I didn't have the technique or follow the recipes properly) but were a vast improvement over anything I'd made before.

I now make the same recipes and they are great!

However, I feel my experiences really offer nothing new to this forum that hasn't already been covered.  My curries taste brilliant, but are still missing that last 5%.  I think I really expected to find a secret ingredient, but from reading all the posts it seemed very unlikely.

I was/am amazed at the dedication that some of you have to getting that last 5%, which makes me think it isn't really possible at home! If it was I'm sure one of you would have cracked it by now.I suspect it's something to do with the scaling of recipes in BIR, or reclaimed oil or using bhaji oil or any number of things that aren't easily reproduced at home.

Saying that I really love my home curries, and to friends and family they are better than the real thing!

So in summary,  I really appreciate all the info on this website and it's helped me make great curries.  I don't have much to contribute that hasn't already been covered, but like popping back in the hope I'm wrong and someone has cracked it for the last 5%