It’s a long time since I’ve written a personal review on an MKCurry Club visit. I usually let the general scores do the talking, unless I think there’s a message to get across to the general public or the restaurant itself.

So, picture the scene. We’re in Olney; we’re all happy having a drink in the local pub; it’s Andy’s birthday; and we’re going for a curry!

We had been to Olney before on one of our Curry Camps when we stayed at Emberton. That day, we’d gone into town early to talk to restaurateurs about ordering a take-away for 40 people. We looked at the Spice Garden, but if I recall, there was no one there. We found a little take away called either the Bengal or the Bengal Tiger and talked to the manager. “Can you do a take away for 40 people in about 3 hours time?” After he picked himself up off the floor and £300 pounds later (so, what’s that, £7.50 a head?) and a bunch of free naans, veggie dishes, wine thrown in he probably prepared himself to close up early and watch TV for the night. And, when the time came, we collected the food, took it back to Emberton – and it was mighty good. We left with a great impression of Olney curry.

So, it was with great expectations that many of us had returned, this time to actually go to Spice Garden (we could have chosen the Four Pillars, which seems to get more press, but the general consensus we could find was that Spice Garden was better).

So, the restaurant is a bit off the track in a “unit” area that also includes a Co-op. It was a nice modern décor inside with good lighting, which was unobtrusive. It seemed reasonably busy all the time we were there, so our hopes were high.

Having got seated and put the drinks order in, we had to get the waiters attention to order popadums…not a good sign. Nor was it a good sign that we had a least one more drink before they turned up! Nor was it a good sign that most of the meals seemed to be £1 or £2 more on the menu than one would normally expect to pay!

The starters came after a longer than most would have liked interval and took a long time to get them all to the table…there was only 12 of us – it really shouldn’t be that difficult. I think the general consensus for the quality of the starters was “OK. Not great, but OK.” [NB – I apologise to those at the other end of the table to me because I could not speak to them as they were too far away and it was quite noisy (Scott?) and their starters may have been excellent]. I had the onion bhajee – traditional bench mark for a new restaurant. First of all, they were flat, not balls. OK, I can let them off that. They were also not oily – which is good. They were a bit floury and a little flavourless. So I suppose again, they were OK. Not great, but OK.

Then a long interval between starters and main course and a long time again to get the food on the table. Oh, and by the way, it’s obviously a requirement in the Spice Garden that you should do the waiters job of moving hot dishes around on hot plates so that they can put your meal down. The staff were attentive during the wait – although a few more smiles would have been nice. I had lamb dhansak. The meat was not as tender as many restaurants we’ve been to – a lot of it seemed “dry”. The veggie dishes were variable in quality and the keema naan was OK (yes, you guessed it, the meal was OK, not great, but OK).

Then, before we got the bill we were offered free drinks on the house. This is something that I notice happens in restaurants when the bill is going to be bigger than expectations. I wish that we’d get a 10% discount for a party of twelve rather than free drinks, as the extra drinks don’t make a bill more palatable!

Value for money is, for me, the most important objective we have as the MKCurry Club to get across to the general public. Does the price you pay for your meal match up to the quality of the food you had. In my opinion, the Spice Garden didn’t.

So, a message for the people of Olney? If you want a good and reasonably priced curry, get a take away from the Bengal. If you want a sit down meal, drive 10 minutes down the road to Newport Pagnell and go to the Indian Cottage or Mysore. For those in Milton Keynes, don’t make the journey, there’s no reason to stray past the plethora of decent restaurants in and around the city. For those in neither town, but looking to go to a good Indian restaurant, go to the Spice Garden by all means, but fill your wallet first and settle down for a long night for OK, not great, but OK food.