Balti-Birmingham

The Punjab Paradise has closed its doors, possibly for the last time. Always on the decline from the halycon days of Mohammed Shabaz, it is still a great shame. RIP Ali (one of the best restaurant 'House' Managers in the business) and the back of house team who undoubtedly produced the best sizzler this side of Lahore.

The recent unprovoked attack on Balti by Lasan’s head chef, Aktar, gave me an attack of gross indigestion as well as indignation but I’ve now recovered in order to set the record straight.

First of all, Lasan is a great restaurant doing mainly ‘authentic’ South Asian cuisine with an innovative twist ... therein lies the key because for ‘innovation’ read ‘invention’, the very thing that Aktar criticises. Yes, Balti is a Brummie invention yet isn’t that the same with all styles of food at some stage? The fact that when I spoke to Aktar a few months ago, he didn’t even know what Balti was, to me, speaks volumes. To remind him, it is a simple but effective style of preparing food and perhaps it could be said to be Brummie equivalent of tasty, inexpensive (compared to Lasan’s platinum prices) street food – the latter concept being one that Lasan have proudly featured at various times.

Now turning to Aktar’s view of the Balti Triangle as being a sort of alcoholic’s paradise … it may have escaped his notice that this mainly Muslim area boasts mostly unlicensed restaurants and whilst usually allowing customers to drink alcohol on their premises, ask their customers to drink sensibly … usually always the case, anyway, given that most customers are families or couples. Probably a somewhat less inebriated profile than one or two of the braying ‘City Gent’ (Daily Mail readers?) types that I’ve seen pass through the portals of Lasan at various times.

Aktar also criticises the ‘same old, same old’ baltihouse décor. Now I don’t know whether he still orders prawn cocktail, chicken in the basket and black forest gateau if he occasionally ‘goes for an English’ but the generic ‘Indian’ flock wallpaper style is definitely a bit 70s and as rare in the Balti triangle as the proverbial rocking horse droppings.

Finally it is an irony that Lasan’s (well deserved) fame for its food was brought to the fore by a Scotsman, Gordon Ramsey, whose favourite ‘Indian’ dish is chicken tikka masala INVENTED in the fair city of Glasgow!

Aktar … keep your head down and cook because that’s what you’re best at and do us all a favour and leave the Brummie Balti alone to be enjoyed unpretentiously and in peace. 

ANDY MUNRO