Indian Restaurant Review: Gurkha, Sandford Road, nr Wareham (From Bournemouth Echo)

Indian Restaurant Review: Gurkha, Sandford Road, nr Wareham

10:30am Friday 3rd September 2010 in

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ANYONE who has ever driven from Bournemouth to Swanage, Corfe Castle or Lulworth Cove (i.e not cheated and taken the chain ferry) will have passed the Gurkha restaurant.

It was on the journey back from a trip to Lulworth Cove that I decided to finally pop in and see why this fascinating restaurant always had a full car park.

Billed as an oriental restaurant, Gurkha offers dishes from Thailand, China, Nepal, Malaysia, India and Singapore, as well as a smattering of British cuisine (chips).

What I wasn’t expecting was that the restaurant only offers an all-you-can-eat buffet or create-your-own style takeaway.

At first my guest and I were a bit baffled, but soon realised that this was in fact genius and began to get very excited about the glorious feast of world cuisine laid out before us in infinite proportions.

Having just walked along the cliff tops from Lulworth Cove to Durdle Door we’d worked up a healthy appetite – perfect preparation for a trip to Gurkha.

After being escorted to your table, it is then up to you to grab a plate and join the game of musical dishes when you spy a gap at the buffet table. As I made my way around the 30 or so dishes I watched as people in front filled up plastic containers with bits of this, bits of that, and then paid for their containers – for me, a totally new experience in takeaway cuisine. Fascinating.

One section of the buffet cart was a curry lover’s paradise with a Thai green curry, red curry, lamb/beef Madras, spicy Aloo gobi, Nepalese chicken curry and Gurkha lamb – which was delightful.

If you don’t think spice is nice then you can try a bit of shredded duck, beef in black bean sauce, sweet and sour chicken, various different rice and noodle dishes, an impressive salad cart, two soup options and a whole host of other dishes.

Inside, the décor is simple and no nonsense. It’s obvious the money was spent on the outside of the building – which is the reason we stopped by, so it works – but when you can bamboozle customers with such an array of culinary experiences, the wallpaper isn’t going to come up in conversation too often.

For an incredibly varied eat-until-you-burst experience, the price of £12.95 per adult/£5.95 per child in the evening and £7.95 per adult/£5.95 per child at lunchtime is pretty good value if you are blessed with a bottomless pit for a stomach.