The girls' night out must be a big earner for restaurants judging by the number of women you can count in any restaurant on any night of the week. The owner of a local antiques shop, for instance, dines out with her friends once a fortnight and they like to go somewhere smart. "Where would you go now?" she asked me. "We like somewhere that's nice and young." But talk about teaching granny to suck eggs. She and the girls had been to almost every restaurant in town and had found most of them lacking in some way or other. Her commentary went something like this: "Well, Lloyds is nice but you can't hear yourself talk; Thortons is wildly expensive; Fitzers we think can't do fish at all; The Commons we tried once but felt it was too cold; The Avenue, gone now, but nice when it was there; Rolys - like a sardine tin; Dobbins, frightfully over-rated; the Unicorn, great fun but we had to wait all night for the food; da Robertas in Blackrock wonderful but the tables far too close together," and so on and so forth. No, this time they wanted something different, but still nice.
Of course, as soon as you recommend a restaurant, the person goes and has an appalling experience, but what the hell, I suggested the Khyber Tandoori on South William Street. It's not new but the food is great and it has the most comfortable dining chairs in Ireland. You can't miss it because the doorman is in full Eastern regalia complete with turban. From this you might imagine that it's a bit tacky inside, all flock wallpaper, swirly carpet, brass gongs and elephants, but it's not. Instead you'll find a very smart dining room with creamy yellow walls decorated with gorgeous embroidered wall hangings. A brass plate screwed to the wall just inside the door tells you that Bertie Ahern presided at the official opening last year, and it's believed he's partial to the odd curry here.
There is a big bar-reception area in front, where you peruse the menu and spoil your appetite with handfuls of Bombay mix. You are then escorted through to the dining room, where the tables are dressed in starched cloths and intricately folded napkins and the chairs are deeply padded all around so that you sink in, rather than sit down. It is a calm, well-ventilated room so you don't come away smelling like an onion bajhi, and there's lots of space. The tables are big, which allows you to have lots of little dishes without having to balance things on the sugar bowl and they are far enough apart that you can have a proper conversation. At the far end of the room is a big glass booth where the tandoori chef can be seen working away through gusts of smoke and steam. The other interesting thing about the Khyber is that lots of men go there. There is something a bit depressing about a night out with the girls in a restaurant full of other women. On the night we ate there we were almost the only women. There was a big table of young guys in glasses who we guessed were IT executives about to become millionaires, a table of English businessmen, a threesome of beards and even a handsome man dining alone. The only other woman in the room to catch the eye was a startlingly platinum blonde who was in the process of wrapping her boyfriend around her little finger - literally. He watched her indulgently as she was served with a big, creamy cake for dessert. She dipped her finger in it and let him lick it off. Next thing they were gone, presumably taking the dessert with them to a more private location. Naomi and Bernice had skipped lunch to prepare themselves for a big, fattening meal with lots of naan bread. First off, we demolished a tall heap of popadoms that came with little dishes of chopped up onions, chutney and a yoghurt dip.
The menu is long and absolutely mouth-watering and probably the best thing to do is skip the starters and go straight to the main courses which can be padded out with a lot of delicious extras. However, if you must have an onion bhaji, you can, and we did, along with chicken pakora parcels and shami kebabs - small, spicy patties of minced lamb and lentils. They were all OK but not a lot more exciting than what you might buy in the supermarket and heat up for supper. Instead of wine, we stuck to beers and mineral water. It took a while to choose main courses from the 50 or so dishes that include traditional tandoori chicken and meat, baltis, mild and hot curries, and creamy concoctions loaded with spices, fruit and nuts. Naomi and Bernice both chose tandoori and their king prawn masala and kabuli chicken tikka shaslik both came bright red and sizzling on iron platters and dressed with onions and peppers. Both were highly flavoured and tender and the portions were generous.
I had a less spectacular dish - chicken pieces in a thick almond and yoghurt sauce, flavoured with spices and scattered with nuts. There was a lot of sauce and not too much chicken, but then that's what naan's for. We had two types - plain naan and peshawari, a sweet version stuffed with nuts. Both were straight from the oven and nicely puffed up and brown. A big dish of pilau rice was more than enough for three, and we packed in some extra calories with servings of tarka dal - lentils cooked to a lovely, oily pulp and chunky cauliflower and potato in garam masala sauce. All together, it looked very messy on the plate but the combination of flavours was wonderful. We didn't quite finish everything, but we still didn't want them to clear the plates too soon in case we got a second wind.
Lacking boyfriends to share them with, we skipped desserts and finished off with weak coffee. The bill comes in a little wooden casket with a few chocolate mints rattling around. We were also handed a rose each, which was a bit embarrassing, but it wasn't just that we were especially charming and beautiful. Every woman gets one. Ours looked limp and depressing but we bunched them together so that Naomi's little girl could wake up to red roses beside her bed, so they weren't such a waste after all.
The bill came to £82 including two large mineral waters, coffees and very friendly and efficient service.
The Khyber Tandoori Restaurant, South William Street, Dublin 2, phone 01-6704855
