First of all I must mention the apple doughnuts from Brysons on Main Street. I am obsessed with these doughnuts. The generous thick silky icing, the soft dough, the tangy apple puree (like the stuff you ate as a baby) the whole thing is just perfect to me. So we ate one each for a late breakfast on the launch as we went round Derwentwater. Perfect!
We had lunch in Treeby and Bolton on Lake Road. The menu looks very tasty and I could have eaten most of it - interesting open sandwiches, Morecambe Bay shrimp salad, smoked cheese, meat and fish platters platters, crepes and some amazing looking scones. It is a really nice venue but we ended up having a pretty unexciting meal. We shared a fish platter and a smoked duck salad. The platter was ok and included slightly bland smoked salmon, rather salty hot smoked trout and prawns in marie rose that just tasted generically 'fishy', all accompanied by some pretty standard salad. The smoked duck was quite tasty and worked with the sweet but tangy damson chutney. It came with more raw red onion that anyone could eat and some slices of creamy smooth brie but as a salad it really didn't all work. The bread however was phenomenal...some delicious, tangy dark dark rye bread and a piece of white bread with seeds. The bread was the highlight of the meal but overall we left pretty disappointed.
Dinner well and truly made up for lunch time. After drinking a bottle of birthday prosecco rather swiftly we tottered down to Lakeland Spice at the bottom on Main Street. Our first choice had been Morrels but we rang to book too late (there was a jazz festival on) but I am pleased we ended up in the Indian. When we got there, 15 minutes late as time just vanished after we opened the prosecco, it was heaving and roasting. The wait was worth it as after 10 mins they sat us in a booth. There is something wonderfully snug about a dinner date in a booth! The decor isn't very exciting a little orange and felt a bit like a restaurant in a Travelodge, but the friendly and quick (but not too quick) service was more important.
We started with some poppadoms and chutneys/raita etc, which appeared on our table literally the second the waiter finished talking our order. We were trying to be healthy so shared an onion bhaji which was nice, sweet and crispy but nothing amazing. The main courses were the highlight. On a recommendation from my mum I had a Prawn Jhal Jul (sp?) which was amazing. It contained a really decent helping of juicy king prawns, lots of onions and garlic and had a wonderful sour hot kick to it with a lot of large pieces of green chilli. I can't get excited about tomato based curries so the nice thick sauce of onions really worked for me without the richness of cream or coconut. The good, fluffy and doughy peshwari naan was the perfect accompaniment. My lady friend had a good tandoori chicken tikka kebab (juicy and smoky with a good balance of spices and the wonderful red colour - for some reason I like the dye!) with a basic salad, raita and a garlic naan. The house white was a very drinkable bottle of Chilean sauvignon blanc and the bill came to £45. Not the cheapest but definitely the tastiest Indian meal I have been out for a long time. I wish I could get takeaway like that in Liverpool.
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