Purbani Tandoori

I love Purbani. When I’m in the mood for a really good Indian takeaway OR if I want to go have a seated dinner somewhere nearby (I recently moved to Highams Park) but still classy, I go with Purbani. The curries are always flavourful and can be made properly spicy. The pilau rice is fluffy and just right, and the garlic naan is fantastic. Plus, a couple of meat curries, two orders of pilau rice, a starter each, and a naan never sets us back more than £20.
We have had one iffy experience recently — our order for delivery had one wrong curry and we got meat samosas instead of the veggie ones we ordered. It was a Tuesday evening and they repeated the order correctly to us over the phone, so no idea what went wrong. Our delivery order after that was bang-​on, though. I think maybe they’ve got some new members of staff in or something. Aside from the one snafu, we’ve had only excellent experiences with them and only excellent food.

been going to the Purbani for years family run business excellent food and service

If this was my first visit here I’d be giving 1 or 2 stars, but it’s been a favourite Indian of mine for many years so hopefully this was a one off bad experience.
We returned here after a two year hiatus. A cold and rainy Monday night, two other parties eating. Warmly greeted as always. But from there it went downhill. We ordered two spicy poppadoms, they came quickly with the usual condiments, but… well I’ll get to that later.
My g/​f ordered one of the more expensive things on the menu, the «Tandoori Fish». Immediately the waiter said it would take a long time to make and quickly ordered the kitchen to get moving. It was right about then I should have asked why it was going to take such a long time; a fresh piece of fish in the Tandoor would surely be done in under 15 minutes, but… well I’ll get to that later.
So, we ordered appetisers to kill the wait. I got the quarter tandoori chicken. It has always been leg and thigh, but this time it was breast. I guess I should have been happy as it was a lot of meat, and cooked very well, plenty juicy. But I love the tandoori spices that I can suck away on on the dark meat, tucked away in the nooks and crannies of the thigh. On this white meat it had very little tandoori sucking ability. My g/​f got the king prawn pancake. The prawns were tiny shrimp, and she complained (to me) that they had a fishy smell, and it was very bland.
So we finished the appetisers, and waited. And waited. Did I mention they said the fish would take a long while. We waited an hour!
When it arrived it was a small Pomfret whole fish, some spices on the outside. The flesh was as bland as could possibly be. This fish had clearly been in the freezer, and the long wait was for it to defrost. 10 quid for a crappy piece of fish. Not good.
I had ordered my old standby, lamb Dupiaza, Madras hot. The onions were well cooked and blended into the sauce, there was a decent amount of lamb. But, shockingly, as I don’t ever remember it happening here before, the spice level was around a 1 instead of around a 7. We had waited so long that I was just going to eat it and not say anything, but the waiter came by and asked, so I told him. He immediately whisked it away and in a few minutes brought back a much more acceptable version. Still about a 5 on the spice scale, but at least I was now getting some heat.
With a naan and a rice and a beer we ended up paying 40 quid for a meal worth nothing like that. On top of that there was a mystery charge on the poppadoms, I think they had charged over 2 quid for the relish tray they came with. I would have asked, but we were already approaching old age and just wanted to leave.
So Purbani, I hope this isn’t the new normal. I’ve had many great meals here in the past, let’s hope I still have many more to come. I hope it was not telling that you had two other tables to serve (and only one when we left) while 1 The Avenue across the street (we had a fantastic Indian meal there last week) looked to be quite busy.