Spice Valley Horwich Authentic Indian Restaurant — Restaurant in Bolton

Had a meal here while staying in the area and looking for an Indian restaurant locally with good reviews.

Tried ringing ahead to book a table but nobody picked up, so decided to just chance it as it was only 2 miles from our hotel.

On arrival we didn't hold out much hope of getting a table as the car park and road outside was all full. Inside the restaurant was the same, but after asking for a table for 2 were told not a problem if we could just wait 5 minutes in the bar area.

The wait for a table was a very short one, and we were quickly shown upstairs to a table. We were glad to be upstairs as it wasn't as noisy, so we could hold a conversation.

We ordered a mixed meat starter for 2, at £14, then the Chicken tikka Bhuna, Lahori Chicken tikka from the chef special, mushroom rice and garlic naan bread.

The mains were very good, and very tasty, and although the mixed starter was ok it certainly wasn't worth the £14 paid. It was basically a piece of lamb tikka each, a piece of chicken tikka each, a piece of tandoori type chicken, and a small shaslik type kebab. It came on a sizzling hot plate and that was it. We often order this type of starter, and you normally get a side plate of salad with to accompany and a little more meat for about £8 on average for two.

The starter was the one thing that let the meal down, but the rest was really good, and the service was also very very good. Would eat here again if...

I'm actually reviewing the Cooking Class experience, not the restaurant itself. We had an absolutely brilliant time. We booked in for a 2 hour class and it was just the two of us. The chef demonstrated everything and then we had a go ourselves. His English wasn't fantastic (although considerably better than my Indian 😂) but there was someone else there to talk us through it all. We made onion bhajis, chicken Rogan Josh, pilau rice and garlic and coriander naans - enough to feed at least 4 people. We were really well looked after, made to feel really welcome and had a lot of fun. I was a little concerned before I went about how they would deal with hygiene. I needn't have worried - they were absolutely on top of it throughout! They supplied us with aprons and chefs hats, notebook and pens and we could keep all of those at the end of the session. We even got a certificate for completing the class. It gave us the confidence, some knowledge and the desire to have many more attempts at making Indian food from scratch. We even got to take all of our food home to feed us and the rest of the family. All in all, I can't recommend it highly enough - we had a fantastic time and felt it was great value for money. If you like Indian food and fancy a go at learning to make it or if you just fancy a really fun time with a friend -...

Service was a little slow, although it was very busy so that's fair enough, we had prawn starters which claimed to be battered with garlic but we're covered in loads of some kind of sauce and underneath all the sauce and batter they were tiny, and looked like something you'd get from packet in a supermarket - for the very high price they were frankly unacceptable. I ordered from the vegan friendly menu and got a mixed veg biryani, it was really disappointing both in flavour and content. It contained a tiny amount veg, which seemed to be just the frozen mixed veg you get in bags. For me if you're going to appeal to vegans/vegetarians, you should be providing a decent quantity of vegetables. The accompanying curry sauce was one dimensional in flavour and had no heat whatsoever, despite requesting medium. My partner's 'hot' curry was nothing of the sort, it didn't even taste hot to me and I have less tolerance than him. The curry sauce was also served in a tiny bucket which mainly ended up on the table as it wasn't suitable for the purpose. To give them credit, they did take the biryani off the bill, but it wasn't cheap despite that and it was disappointingly flavourless overall. I wouldn't go back...