Junahki

63 St. Johns Road, Royal Tunbridge Wells
Kent TN4 9TT 01892 615200

Many of you have been enthusing about the food at Junahki, so I took the wife down to the St. Johns Quarter to see what all the fuss was about. And sure enough, although it was empty when we arrived, it didn't take long for the place to get packed to the rafters, and on a Tuesday night too.
If we'd encountered the wife's crabcakes anywhere else, it would most likely have won the Who's Got The Best Starter contest. However, in the face of my majestic Chott Poti, it didn't even get a look in. If I could give six stars to a course, this would get them with flying colours. Goodness knows how you can get a plate of spuds, peas, chickpeas and chicken to be so darned tasty, but I guess that's the magical alchemy of expert Indian spiceology. I've never wanted to stick my head in a bucket of chickpeas before, or even be within a mile of them, but I guess there's a first time for everything.
The skill with which Indian cuisine uses spices is down partly to necessity - to make a piece of not so nice meat as palatable as possible. It would have been nice if my main course of Bollywood Dreams hadn't followed this particular piece of authenticity to the letter. I didn't particularly enjoy chewing at a tired, old piece of leathery mutton, but I just ignored the old sheep because the sauce was exquisite and I was happy to scoop it up with my plain naan (big and fluffy with a lovely black bottom). The wife's halibut was certainly better quality than my lamb, but was completely overwhelmed by a humdinger of a sauce, so they may as well have stuck a piece of rotten old coley in and the dish probably wouldn't have been diminished too much.
Two courses and a couple of cobras was just over forty quid, although you could safely shave this down a tad by not ordering the expensive fish course; the sauces are the stars of the show here. Make sure you order plenty of naan for maximum dippage and away you go. A week on and I'm still having Chott Poti dreams!

Experience
Service
Value
Food
Overall

Comments

[Just Dresses]

I ordered the Chott Potti in my takeaway on Saturday having remembered it from your review. You're right, it was a divine sauce!

[Zia Choudhury]

I wanted to challenge an old myth, about why spices are used in India. It is not about making 'not nice'/ bad food taste palatable, as the reviewer claims. Historically, in most of the spice eating world, fish, meat and vegetables are free-range/organic and slaughtered/ harvested on the day of consumption, so items are fresher that that of the average 'western' kitchen. No need to disguise any bad tastes at all. Spices were used by peasants and royalty alike.

Spices are used because they are available, and they taste good. In some cases, like tumeric, some believe they have medicinal properties, as well as imparting an attractive colour. Garlic and chilli are believed to have blood and skin cleansing properties. They myth of the indian disguising bad food came around partly becuase conservative colonial palates needed to find a reason for the exisitance of this strange, spicy, colourful cuisine. For many it was so removed from the British/ French ideas of 'normality' that they could not accept it as simply a choice made by another culture.

Tumeric and salt are used by some to help preserve fish and meat longer, the same as the salting process we are familar with in Europe.

Happy eating !

[Zia Choudhury]

Junahki. If I am not mistaken, it means 'Firefly' in Bangla language. Sometimes pronounced 'Jonakhi'. A beautiful name !