Ajanta Express Kitchen, Woodford: Tantalising Indian Takeaway
The current Lockdown, which began in deep winter, felt a little grim, to say the least. As the initial Lockdown morphed into 2.0 then 3.0 - it feels like we’re on 4.0 now - it’s all become a bit of a blur. The one thing that’s remained a constant for many of us is food and drink. With no socialising, travel trips or things to look forward to, eating is one of the few comforting windows onto the world. When restaurants closed, options narrowed to the humble takeaway.
Ajanta Express Kitchen in South Woodford is a well-established seven-days a week business delivering Indian dishes to lucky East London residents. Or you can do what we did, get your partner to swing by on a Friday night and bring it 40 miles down the A12 from Woodford (he was on his way back from work). It might sound crazy, but fortune favours the brave, and this certainly jazzed up an otherwise boring Friday night in.
The menu has over 100 dishes, including meat, fish, vegetarian and vegan with a vegan version of classic favourites – korma, masala and bhajis. It’s a good menu, not just in terms of dishes, but layout, with descriptions of dry or wet sauces; mild to extremely-hot dishes.
When it came to buttoning down the order, it gets more complicated, as our house is a hybrid, in terms of dietary requirements, with a vegetarian wannabe-vegan daughter whose parents veer between vegan, vegetarian with odd bits of fish or meat. Our order had to reflect all of these needs. Boy did it.
We opened up box after box of still-warm, spicy, sweet dishes. New to us was vegetable nawabi, a mild medley of soft potato pieces, bitter spinach leaves and sweet green peas, bound by a creamy sauce, thick with dessicated coconut and chef’s secret sauce. Old favourites, such as comforting spicy spinach and potato sag aloo and crowd-pleasing vegetable samosas, especially with our daughter, who we let ringfence the majority of the crispy golden pastry triangles. We fish-eaters piled up the rich red prawn jalfrezi - jumbo king prawns elevated by cooking with chillies, onions, peppers, garlic, mustard seed, a squeeze of lemon juice and lime leaves with a side of perfect sweet-smelling pilau rice. We sat back, with full stomachs and clean plates all round. When life opens up, we’ll order it again when we’re in the area but for now if chef wants to open up about his secret sauce recipe, I promise I won’t spill the beans…
Order online, by telephone 0208 530 7273 or via the app