I see his point about the chefs. Whereas 40 years ago they were lucky to arrive in the UK and would work their bollocks off for 70 hours a week to keep the owners happy (and the money sent home to the family in India), nowadays a good head chef holds the power. They can ask what they like of the owners who will usually have to back down. A BIR with a poor head chef wont be around for long.

The other big challenge they will face is with the new harsher immigration laws. I used to own half of an immigration company and we had a BIR as a client. Even 2 years ago you could barely scrape a permit for a head chef or restaurant manager and even then you had to provide employee charts showing how many people they would be in charge of. Even swapping a head waiter from one of the owners BIR's to another one was not possible. the permit was declined because he wasn't senior enough. These days it's much harder and is points based like the old HSMP system. I don't imagine many Indian chefs will have a degree or could pass a spoken English test. What they can do is cook bloody good food but you don't get any points for that.

The next generation of head chefs will probably be born and raised in the UK. the lucky ones will train under a good head chef, the rest will get thrown into it by their families and the quality will suffer.

Well steering the topic back a little, I had a second visit tonight. This time I opted for Chicken Tikka Massala, Mushroom Rice and Keema Naan. I chose these as a good way for me to gauge the TA against others I have frequented and indeed my beloved IG.

It's a similar result, it was good quality food but the Tikka was too Salty as too was the Keema in the Naan. The Massala sauce was a good thick consistency and overall had a good depth of flavour but far to sweet with sugar which as I realise now, is to mask the copious amount of salt being used.

I am now convinced that the chef has numbed senses when it comes to sweet and savoury seasoning. What ever the reason be for this, in my opinion the TA is just another mediocre outlet selling cheap curry to the masses. Will I visit again? Well I think you know the answer to that.

Picking up a few points at random (I came here searching for "Ghurka" !) :

1) Salt.  Never found a BIR over-salty; far more often have to ask for salt-pot if not visible on table.

2) Spices, pastes, catering sizes and costs.  Yes, buying a bulk pack of (e.g.) Patak's Hot Lime Pickle can save you a fortune, and yes, the costs of the catering size packs have gone up quite significantly over the past couple of years.

** Phil.