Mirch Marsala

We've just been out and had the best lunch ever. We were in Tooting this morning visiting a friend at St George's and thought we might go for an Indian lunch. We were recommended Mirch Masala and the food was exceptional. The place is not smart and the staff are not particularly friendly or all that helpful but the food is very fresh and very well cooked. With tonight's chilli (so going to end up in the freezer) in mind, I wanted to eat vegetarian but in the end we shared poppadoms, a couple of grilled meat starters followed by a lamb curry (Karahi Methi Gosht) which was tender and beautifully spiced, chana daal, rice and naan. Scrap scoffed a pistachio kulfi and with soft drinks, the bill came to just £20.70. You really should go.

Before we left we were offered a bowl of pan, the mixture of seeds and tiny aniseed sweets that aid digestion. Scrap went crazy for it and held a tight handful all the way up the street so we ended up buying a bag ourselves from one of the grocery stores. Our particular mix contained sesame seeds, sugared fennel seeds, roasted fennel seeds, split coriander seeds and flavourings (oops) six E-number colours (yikes) and mouth freshner(!!!!)