Coriander

One of the advantages of living in sunny South Manchester is that if you can't be bothered cooking, you can always nip out to one of the many many fantastic nearby restaurants without the need to go into town. There are so many places to go within just a few miles of our gaff, and still so many that I haven't tried that I want to try. One of those places was Coriander in Withington - an Indian and Bangladeshi restaurant which came highly recommended by many sources, not only for its scrum curries but also the fact that the food is supposed to be mega healthy. Perfect for me and Bailey who tend to eat like saints in the week to make up for the ills of the weekend.

As expected at 5pm on a random Tuesday night, the restaurant was very quiet but we didn't mind. There was also a big A-board outside advertising their midweek deal - three courses for something like £6 - can't remember the price exactly - sorry! Whatever the price was it seemed like a great deal.

Well. That was until we looked at the menu - turns out the 'three courses' were just as follows - 'Course' 1 - poppadoms and pickles, 'Course' 2 - a curry, 'Course' 3 - rice. Hmm... Call me pernickety but I wouldn't say that was exactly three courses.

Anyway, we still went for it and the poppadoms and pickles arrived. The pickles were delicious - they definitely tasted healthy and provided us with a lovely range of different flavours from sweet to oniony to spicy. The poppadoms, although served in a unconventional fashion - broken up in a large wooden bowl - were good although not quite up to the standard of Mughli which we had recently visited.

For my main course I had a Vegetable Jalfrezi with some boiled rice. This was really lovely and was indeed very healthy tasting. It was packed full of loads of fresh veg and had that grainy potatoey texture of curries that you usually get in veggie cafés. I loved it.

I love having salads with my curries to give them that extra bit of crunch, so I'm always happy with the usual curry house offering of shredded lettuce, a couple of tomatoes, cucumber slices and a wedge of lemon to compliment my curry. On asking the waiter about what salads they offered, he recommended me the spicy Village Salad. This was absolutely amazing - loads of crunchy veggies and chillis, which worked amazingly well with the finely chopped mint that was running through it. I thought this was ace - a cut above the rest!

Bailey decided on the Chicken Jalfrezi with a side order of Cheese and Onion Naan Bread. He thought this was really nice with the perfect amount of heat. His naan was also good but as we were comparing to the recently-visited Mughli, he wasn't as impressed with the bread as he could have been. The rice we had was perfectly cooked and we liked the little crispy onions on top - a nice touch!

We did enjoy our meal out at Coriander and the service was also very good but I have to admit that I liked it more than Bailey did. I liked the way everything was healthy and that's definitely a good selling point for them, but the food must have been a bit forgettable as Bailey actually struggled to remember what he had eaten when I asked him to help me write this review! I said I would go again, especially if I was taking my mum (who loves healthy food), but Bailey argued that just up the road there is the excellent Moon Restaurant which impressed him more. I suppose the jury is out a little bit!