A quick picture of the pathia I cooked last night..

As soon as the lid was opened the familar aroma hit me..100% BIR.
I managed to watch the chef make his marinade for his chicken tikka.The tikka from this place is very nice indeed,and the marinade has a couple of unusual ingredients.Apart from the normal suspects such as yoghurt,tandoori,tikka and kashmiri massala paste the chef added a dollop of tomato ketchup as well as some Coleman's mustard.He also added some pre-blended corrinader and chiili paste as well as some blended shatkora.He then added a small amount of sweet chiili sauce.Certainly some unusual ingredients for a tikka marinade,but nonetheless the result is very good indeed.
There were a couple of other things I spotted.The precooked veg had panch poran in it,and the pre cooked potatoes were cooked in exactly the same way but with some cumin seeds instead.
Some of the dishes looked very exotic on the menu,some are listed with 'special sauces simmered with freshly ground spices etc'.In reality,like most places they use an array of pickles and other short cuts.Chicken Dewana,for example is listed as a curry simmered with a special chiil sauce.It is in fact a normal curry with some naga pickle added.The special peanut sauce in the chicken badami is actually smooth peanut butter.They also have a chicken garam massala on the menu,which has 'hot spices and freshly ground herbs'.I've seen them cook this one a few times.It's basically a normal curry with a chef's spoon of shaslik marinade(which is actually different to their tikka marinade).They then add some mint sauce and then suprisingly a dollop of prawn cocktail sauce.Sounds unappealing I know,but If you taste the curry you'll be very suprised how good it tastes.There were a few bits I didn't recognize.For example,the chef adds a paste to his madras and vindaloo.Not sure what exactly it was,but I'll do my best to find out next time.