Bengal Paradise, 1 Columbia Road, Bournemouth (From Bournemouth Echo)

Bengal Paradise, 1 Columbia Road, Bournemouth

10:00am Thursday 17th June 2010 in

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THE best take-away curries are always the impromptu ones, so with nothing defrosted and the day before’s pasta-bake looking decidedly un-alluring, it was time to dig out the most recent menu to have popped on to our doormat.

Bengal Paradise, that’s the fella.

Along with all the usual suspects you’d expect from a good curry house, you can also go ‘off menu’ and design your own dish – a little creamier? A bit hotter? A tad more fenugreek, that sort of thing. Or, alternatively, a great idea for competitive curriers who reckon they can eat the hottest thing on the list, and some.

So we ordered a couple of slightly hotter garlic chilli chicken tikkas, which turned out to be spot on, unctuous and smooth but a bit cheeky too, the sweet, buttery garlic (and, beware, there’s loads of it) taking some of the fire out of the chunky slices of lurking chilli.

We shared a well-flavoured pilau rice to avoid the shameful binning of far too much food at the end, but two tasty Keema naans – like fluffy purses stuffed with finely flavoured spicy minced meat – ensured we didn’t feel deprived.

As did a side of Bombay potatoes – no Indian take away is complete without this, and it is also a good measure of the kitchen’s skills, requiring soft, but not mushy, potatoes and a subtle blending of the spices that give it the comforting feel of a nursery dish... that gives you a slap around the face. Which was more-or-less how it turned out to be.

The bill? £22, including delivery with a smile.