Flames and Fountains

During our recent night out in Dewsbury in West Yorkshire, we decided to round off the evening with a curry. As Dewsbury has a healthy Asian population, there are many Asian food choices. We soon fell upon the Bombay Palace within the central ring road, and on the edge of the town centre.

The Bombay Palace had only been open a few days, having relocated from its former home in nearby Batley. The restaurant had many fans in Batley, and I heard of the place, if never actually visited.

As the restaurant is new, it is very nicely furbished, with pale walls, dark wood mirrors and wall lights. As we entered, the owner bounded over as if we were old friends. After he had shaken us by the hand, we were ushered to our seats. Another nice touch is that the restaurant is disability access friendly. There are no steps, but a very slight lip at the entrance. The doors are a little narrow and stiff, but the washroom is disabled friendly, with rails. It’s not the easiest place to access in a wheelchair, but it appears do-able.

The Bombay Palace is unlicensed, but you can bring in your own alcohol if you wish. We were content with a jug of water, but the restaurant does sell some soft drinks if you prefer.

We were pleased with the choice on the menu; many of our favourite Indian choices were there, along with a few different ones. As we had been wandering the streets of Dewsbury for a couple of hours, we elected for starters and main courses. A poppodom each with a pot of minty yoghurt sauce magically appeared gratis on our table, as we waited for our meal.

The restaurant wasn’t busy, and the wait service was excellent. We weren’t rushed through our meal, and it was timed perfectly. As we ate, a party of well-dressed business diners arrived. However, we were comfortable in our casual clothes.

Starters

I elected for the Chana Chaat for starter, as I’m a devil for chickpeas. I received a small bowl full of spicy hot and steaming chickpeas in a wonderful tamarind based sauce, with a small side salad. The dish went down very well with a little of the yoghurt sauce. My beloved chose vegetable samosas, and received a small plate of very fresh looking food. So often, you find that the restaurant keeps the samosas for a day or two, and they are a little stale around the gills.

One of our other dining companions went for the mixed starter. These dishes are usually for those with a healthy appetite, and the Bombay Palace didn’t disappoint. There was a really nice selection of small starters to try. I think when we return, I’d like just a couple of these dishes to share between four, so as to get many different nibbles.


Main courses

My starter was on the hot and spicy side, so I was anticipating a little bit of a battle with my main course, the Chicken balti karahi. The name seems a western corruption as both balti and karahi refer to the dish the meal is cooked in.

My dish arrived with two whole sliced green chillies, and so beware: the dish is quite hot. As an experienced curry eater, I could handle the hotness (and indeed left just a couple of chilly quarters on my bowl at the end of my meal). The curry was freshly cooked, with obviously fresh quarters of tomato included, rather than tinned. There was plenty of chicken, and the dish was large enough to leave me completely full. To accompany my main course, I had ordered a garlic naan. This was lovely and fluffy, and laden with oily garlic sauce. My work companions were no doubt grateful that I had already decided to work from home the following day!

My beloved equally appreciated her chicken shashlik dish. She had six huge chunks of tandori chicken breast delivered sizzling on a platter of fried onion rings. Her plate contained a bed of salad, and of course, she had yoghurt sauce to accompany. The meal must have contained at least two large chicken breasts of meat, and my beloved couldn’t finish it all. Her only slight grumble was that her salad wasn’t particularly exciting (largely iceberg lettuce, onion and tomato).

One of our dining companions is less experienced in the ways of spicy foods, and so had ordered a biryani in the understanding that it would be fairly mild. While the vegetable curry sauce was indeed not too laced with spice, the rice arrived with small shreds of fresh green chilli pepper. While she loved her meal, it was at the upper end of her heat tolerance, and she was red and blotchy by the end of her meal! Fortunately, the waiter kept the bottles of water flowing.

Our meal for four came to a shade under £40 ($80), which we thought was an excellent deal for such a good quality meal. I can certainly recommend the Bombay Palace, although as it is quite small, I can picture the place soon filling at peak times.

OK, so the economically depressed West Yorkshire town of Dewsbury isn’t usually the most exciting place to visit, but the local council are making efforts to change all that. Their latest initiative is the Flames and Fountains evening, which will hopefully become an annual tradition, along the lines of Huddersfield’s more established Festival of Light. Given that we live just a few miles down the road, we decided to venture out on a cold but clear February evening, just to see what was going on.

This year’s inaugural event featured two street entertaining troupes, La Salamandre from France, and Avanti Display from England.

First up, the fire teasers from La Salamandre undertook a brave procession around the dour Dewsbury streets. You might imagine locals would be bored of flames licking the streets from burnt out stolen cars, but they came in droves to watch the French pyromaniacs light up the night sky.

In fact, La Salamandre offered a distinct new age feel to Dewsbury, as men with hair tied in top knot bunches, and Michael Stipe make up, wandered down the street in tunics, dropping off lines of firelighters, and liquid paraffin fireballs. Behind them, others pulled a handmaiden’s cart; the handmaiden looked suspiciously like Amy Winehouse fresh from rehab, gyrating on top of the cart of sticks. Does anyone else remember the movie, The Wickerman?

In truth, although the display was simple, and consisted of no more than a dozen players, La Salamandre’s procession was highly effective, and a little unnerving. It really did feel like we had moved to another age of superstition and witchcraft.

It was also refreshing to see grown men play with paraffin in these over cautious days of health and safety. I didn’t hear the frantic siren of ambulances and fire engines, so I can only assume that all went well.

On the downside, unless you got a ringside view, the floor level antics of the group was difficult to see. We got a good view for part of the procession, but during the main 30-minute display of fire walking and the like, we just spotted flames bouncing around the large crowd. From a distance, the red flickering flames and the waving arms looked more like a riot. I imagine the displays of La Salamandre are far more suited to an open space, rather than in the dense streets of Dewsbury.

The advantage of our position was that we could see the Victorian splendour of the solidly built Town Hall. Those stern Victorian Yorkshire folk were obviously determined that the world would not forget their sense of civic duty. Today however, something was amiss from that usual sense of sobriety and control; the Town Hall was decked in blue and pink lighting.

The piece from Avanti Display started slowly; a shrouded figure draped in a white sheet stood ghostly on the town hall steps, while the lights gently danced. Suddenly, a man hoisted from a crane gently floated across to the town hall and whipped off the sheet to reveal a suited man displaying a red phallus. I can only speculate what the council committee of 1908 might have thought.

Avanti Display promised to make a fountain of the town hall, and it started small, as the besuited man started to "urinate" over the town hall steps from his phallus. I guessed it was like this every other Saturday night in Dewsbury town centre. Suddenly he spouted water from his arms, and then his neck. In this cold weather, I felt sorry for the man, gently getting wetter and wetter.

Suddenly the lights changed, and we spotted some women singing light opera from the balcony above, while water and lights slowly flowed like long held tears from the dour frame of the hall. OK, I might have had a puff of the funny stuff by that point, but hopefully you get the picture.

We just knew the evening had to end in a grand finale, and suddenly the fire works began. I was more impressed that they had decided to go for loud banging fireworks, rather than too many of the bright showy kind. It seemed more appropriate for the surroundings and hard stone. I had also been getting worried I had interrupted a Cirque du Soleil practice session, but those hard echoing firework cracks thankfully brought me back to earth.

Before we knew it, the show had ended, and some councillor was standing on the steps congratulating themselves for the vision and foresight to turn the town hall into a weeping fountain. For once, he was probably right; art as political comment. This was a perfect setting for such a surreal display of street performance. It may be ten a penny in Covent Garden, but pure genius to make it larger and transfer it to the hard and practical streets of Dewsbury. I was surprised to hear general murmurs of approval around me, after all the council had just spent their money on fancy arty stuff.

I was certainly impressed and surprised at the spectacle in Dewsbury; it was better, more strange, and bigger than I had anticipated. I certainly hope the council brings back the show as an annual event. Look out for it in February 2009!