Shaquile's

Brick Lane is near Liverpool St station and it's lined with Bangladeshi and Pakistani restaurants. I went there tonight with a group of collegues and we were ten. Apparently what happens is you walk along the road inspecting the menus and the manager will come out and try to entice you in. Then you try to negotiate a free deal, e.g. free poppadums, a round of drinks or a discount. In some cases the more seasoned co-workers were looking at getting a 25% discount on the prices.

We settled on Shaquile's; a Bangladeshi restaurant. I had the Lubi Gosht, which is a lamb curry with green vegetables (very Bangladeshi I'm told by the menu). This was very tasty and my Chinese colleague Tao, who thinks that Chinese food is the best, proclaimed, "This is very tasty. It's like Chinese food." [trans. because only Chinese food is tasty] - high praise indeed.

There weren't many of the classic Indian dishes like Rogan Josh or Lamb Korma, but I did see Chicken Tikka Masala (a wholly Anglo-Indian invention I discovered during a documentary) and various Kormas of meat and vegetable. There was a whole range of different dishes here that I'd never heard of before. I think the competition is so stiff that the quality and value is actually quite high in this area.

I ordered a Palak Paneer to accompany my Lubi Lamb and some Naan. There was a special deal going for £6.95: starter (not seafood), main, rice and naan. I didn't get that, but about four people did. PhD scholarships are on the order of £12,000 pa so budgets are tight in a town like London. I actually can't imagine how they survive. I'm barely coping on my salary as it is.

The total for 10 people was £135.