Talbot Green curry house Spice Plus has collected many awards and after tasting their food it’s easy to see why
Spice Plus in Talbot Green
I’m a reasonably seasoned curry eater who has a go-to list of favourite dishes from my reliable restaurants and takeaways so I’m always wary to veer too far from my local’s delicious dhansak on a damp midweek evening when all I want is a dash of comfort.
This week, though, we’ve seen another round of top Asian restaurants awards and a spot local to me has claimed the title of Wales’ Best Asian Takeaway. It’s somewhere I have tried in the past after having a word and pushing myself to try something new.
Talbot Green’s Spice Plus is well versed in taking home gongs for its takeaway offering having won the same award three years running. So when I visited I had high expectations.
When we visited Spice Plus was selling their Cymru Curry special, which is made with laverbread and lamb. While they might not currently have that on the menu we did order some other dishes off the menu that are still available and have up-to-date pricing.
I’ll tell you what, though, if the standard of the Cymru Curry is anything to go by the other curries will be worth a bash too.
Billed as an alternative to saag laverbread, for those unfamiliar, is edible seaweed often fried up and served with bacon for a hearty dose of vitamins and iron. I like laverbread, quite a lot actually, but I was honestly quite sceptical of it going in a curry. I thought it might make the dish way too salty and, well, that it just wouldn’t work.
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There wasn’t a long wait for my order, which was fleshed out with a few sides – bombay aloo, aubergine bhajee (both £4), onion and watercress bhajees (£3.70), the obligatory rice and peshwari naan, and an interestingly-named chicken starter called Slay the Dragon (£5) to make it a full meal for two people.
A cute meal tray (that you can reuse)
I went home to eagerly tuck in to the laverbread and lamb – as soon as I tasted it (on the edge of a poppadom as I served it out of course) I was more than happy and I was proved wrong regarding the salty laverbread.
It was a similar texture to saag indeed but a different flavour entirely. The seaweed served to make the curry beautifully saucy with a rich, unctuous texture, the modest chunks of lamb were lovely and soft and, for the price of the dish (£10), that comes with rice and four mini naan wedges, it was great value. Just for context other main curry dishes are priced from £7-£12.
So the taste? It wasn’t too overpowering even though there was tonnes of laverbread in there. It had a delicate sort of sweet umami backdrop and it complemented the meat beautifully.
If you love a saag curry you’d definitely like this – the seaweed lends itself perfectly to thickening out a flavoursome curry sauce. I would definitely choose it again – I wonder if Spice Plus will keep it on the menu?
The accompaniments of rice, aubergine, and bombay aloo with Slay the Dragon
The other items stood up strongly too with the onion and watercress bhajees one of the best I’ve tasted to be honest (I’m a total onion bhajee fan and have an imaginary ranking in my mind I think about daily – I should really write it down).
The Slay the Dragon starter was lush too. Billed as a Mysore delicacy the chunks of chicken were pineapple-flavoured and honey-glazed and cooked in the tandoor. I would love a bigger version of this, with larger bits of chicken, as the flavour there was incredible. It was sweet and smokey and the opposite of the other flavours we’d ordered. The bombay aloo was a good one and the aubergine had great flavours again (though as a matter of personal taste I’d have liked them to be cooked down a bit more).
It’s really hard to take sexy pictures of curry but it tasted great
As someone who loves curryI am always more than happy to shout about a great takeaway when I find it. I would definitely head for Spice Plus again if my regular favourite was closed.