Clay Oven Indian kitchen — Restaurant in Albufeira

Out of the Clay oven and into the fire of a damn good curry.

Spotted the Clay Oven just walking past. Place was full and the menu had some great vegan dishes. Why not, and all I can say is … a very lucky find indeed …

Restaurant: It’s upmarket. Nicely set tables, polished cutlery and glasses with traditional music. It’s open plan so you can see the food being cooked and it smells amazing.

Menu. There’s a whole page dedicated to vegetarian dishes of which most are vegan and the many others can be adapted. With the exception of one rice and one bread, all the rice, naans and rotis are vegan too. When ordering they ask you for the level of heat you’d like - and they nailed it. We had …

Poppadoms and pickle €6 to start. Nice selection of pickles with an unusual one which was nice - can’t recall what it was.

Legume (Vegetable) Biryani €10.50. The rice and vegetables came separate (as did the meat on other tables) showing they understand veganism and the importance of food separation. It was a great biriyani with veg perfectly cooked and the sauce tasted wicked - hot but not too hot.

Baigan Bhartha (Roasted Aubergine Curry) €10.50 with Arroz de Cogumelos (Mushroom Fried Rice) €4. Aubergine is easily and quickly destroyed if overcooked but this was perfect. It had absorbed the flavour retaining its soft but tender structure. This was to be very hot 🥵 and it was, but without being a overpowering dry powdered heat. Delish and mushroom rice went well with it as they had big chucks of mushrooms in it.

Chilli Naan €4 and a Kulcha Naan (potato and spices filling) €4.50 were bloody gorgeous. Not your usual big fat doughy naans, but flat well flavoured naan’s straight ‘out of the clay oven and into the fire ‘of the spicy curry.

Super Bock Beer €3.50 each were a great accompaniment to the biriyani and curry.

It was one on the better curry’s I’ve had outside of London.

Would I go back? Yes indeedy

Would I recommend?...

This is one of my hardest reviews I've ever had to do. The food was fantastic, and absolutely no complaints about this. It is probably in my top ten Indian restaurants for quality and taste. The venue is clean and of a great standard. The white sangria was a bit sweet but overall amazing, one of the best I've ever had. Now for the down side. They make a point at the start of the menu of saying they would cook to order a dish if it was not on the menu, however this was an empty statement. When trying to ask if their Biryani was traditional and had raisins, the waiter could not care less, either didn't understand or didn't care, he simply hurried us to order our food, almost rolling his eyes when we had a question about something on the menu. In fact he was quite rude and short with us. Considering we only took around 2 minutes to order, this made us very uncomfortable. I thought it might just have been our waiter but this seemed to be the case with most of them. The restaurant has a quick turnaround of patrons and it seemed like they just wanted us to order, eat and then go....except when it came to the bill, then we couldn't get this for about 20 minutes, all while people were waiting outside to get in. Also, best to order two drinks at the start because they won't offer you another one. Overall I wouldn't go back, sure the food was great, but for me, having an Indian is enjoying the atmosphere and food! If you only care about quick quality food, then you'll probably quite like it, but don't expect a dining experience...

Tried this restaurant for the first time and I must say I was impressed. Decor was exceptional, modern and stylish and very clean. Service was also great and the manager was on the ball and very friendly but staff seemed to be a little lacking. I say this because we ordered 2 main courses and I received my order first but had to wait for my wife's food. It was not until I caught the managers attention, at which point he knew exactly what I was going to say and the rest of the food followed immediately. We also got short changed when we paid the bill. These items are minor and could have been avoided with a little attention from staff, this being said it was hard to fault the rest of the service and food. The food quality was exceptional and the only complaint my wife had with her chicken saag was that it needed to have a little more chicken otherwise it was the best chicken saag she has had in a long time. My mix grill was good but the king prawn was small compared to others I have had in area (Taj mahal- service at the Taj deadful). On a plus I have to say the clay oven got the spice and heat bang on! The sauce the mix grill came with was hot and spicy as I had asked for it and it was perfect. By far the best Indian restaurant we have tried in Portugal so far and we'll deserving of 5 stars if it was not for poor...