Redland Tandoori — Restaurant in Bristol

Brilliant authentic South Asian restaurant - a hidden gem in Bristol!

We’d given up a long time ago trying to find an authentic South Asian restaurant outside of Brick Lane in London, however, after hearing about Redland Tandoori’s recent popularity and reading the reviews since the restaurant changed hands we were obliged to give it a try.

Firstly, the interior is beautifully decorated and the ambience is a friendly buzz with traditional Hindi music playing in the background - a nice touch but not too loud to drown out conversations. We also noted the furniture is especially comfortable and you can sit comfortably for a long time, unlike the wooden chairs most restaurants seem to stock.

It seems the restaurant is family run and the service is very attentive and welcoming and we weren’t rushed while picking through the extensive menu. To start, we had poppadums which were light and not too oily, they were paired with a selection of fresh and flavourful chutneys which we thoroughly enjoyed.

For the mains we ordered lamb jalfrezi, red snapper balti, pilau rice, garlic naan, peshwari naan, coke and a mango lassi.

Firstly, the mango lassi was a perfect complement to the meal, it was very fragrant and creamy and was the perfect level of sweetness - it was a very generous serving too (see picture below).

The lamb was beautifully cooked and tender and paired with a rich sauce and vegetables, The red snapper balti was also very impressive and flaked apart easily with a fork but wasn’t mushy. What sets this restaurant apart is each dish had it’s own distinctive flavours and spices - visibly they looked similar so we were apprehensive but by taste they were completely unique and perfectly suited to the lamb and fish. The pilau rice was very good and the naans were served fresh and hot, we could tell by the charred and crisp base they had been made fresh in the tandoor oven. The garlic naan was very aromatic and fragrant and the peshwari naan had a lovely sweet filling.

It was clear that this restaurant cooks it’s menu using fresh ingredients and treats every dish like a home cooked meal, as opposed to many restaurants which are churning out overly oily, creamy and sweet ‘curries’ that have all been made from the same sauce bases.

In today’s day and age if you want quality food a hefty bill is usually justified - the staggering thing about this restaurant is they serve huge portions of quality food and a vast majority of their main dishes are under £10!

This humble restaurant is very well deserving of the recent hype and reviews and I can honestly say I don’t think I have had Indian restaurant food to this standard outside of South Asia. We will definitely be coming back - and hopefully securing a regular table before it gets...

We looked forward to our first meal at Redland Tandoori because of its appealing menu and great Google reviews. Our experience was disappointing in most ways.

We’d booked via their website (perhaps unnecessary given our 5pm slot), choosing the Fork option. The first minor annoyance was that we kept getting messages confirming from both Fork and Google.

When we arrived, on time for our reservation, I was not sure the restaurant was even open, it was so dark. But the door was open. We spoke to the staff person setting up tables and he had no knowledge of our reservation. He explained perhaps the owner had not passed on the information. We were seated without much welcome.

Another perhaps minor annoyance was that the appealing menu was in a cover which hid either parts of the item or the price.

We ordered items we regularly had at our previously favorite Indian restaurant to compare (we only stopped going there because it had changed hands and changed the food and experience).

The pappadam were rather stale and not hot (we later heard some crunching at the next table who came in after us. We guessed we had left overs and they had fresh).

The best part of the meal was my fish tandoori. It was excellent and I loved the grilled vegetables which were included. My husband ordered lamb dhansak. He received chicken dhansak which did not compare favourably to past experiences elsewhere. My roti were lukewarm and without much flavour. His naan were different from his past experience, but he enjoyed them.

I am disappointed in our experience because I had high hopes given their many tandoori choices. We will not return since the negatives strongly outweighed the positives. We were in agreement to rate...

BELOW AVERAGE TAKEAWAY The cheap, white UPVC windows on the outside and only one table taken on a Sunday night were not a good first impression. Also no one else in and out for takeaways.Nor the gimmicky fad of pricing everything on their menu using decimal points, so £6.50 appears on the menu as 6.5. Slightly bizarre and confusing. Is it too much trouble to include the old British pound sign and some extra zeros? Anyway, the food. First time I've ever had onion bhajis that didn't include salad from an Indian (or is this a Pakistani now?). Didn't seem right and for a few pence for some lettuce, slice of tomato and cucumber and wedge of lemon seemed a bit mean and made the starter appear a lot smaller and stingy. The bhajis weren't very nice, flat dark things that looked more like burgers than those nice golden, ball-shaped delights that Indian restaurants used to offer. The accompanying mint sauce was a lurid, synthetic green that looked strange. My pilau rice was fine, but the chicken bhuna lacked excitement and when tipped over the rice did something very strange. Although the bhuna seemed to have plenty of sauce when tipped out, when I was eating my meal the sauce seemed to disappear into the rice, leaving the curry a bit dry. I can only think this is because they don't use any ghee in the curry and use veg oil or similar. Did make the curry quite disappointing in both texture and taste. Overall a disappointment, and after sampling the food I now understand why this restaurant in a good location...