K2 21/02/2009

Present were Martin, Jill, Rob, Mario, Fran, Claire, Lynda and John.

Well, the Feb meeting of BCC went without hitch. People arrived throughout the evening and Claire, Fran, Lynda and me eventually met the rest of the party (Rob, Jill, Mario and Martin) in the New Beehive, a place they seemed reluctant to leave – lol, at around 21:00.

We ventured down the notorious Lumb Lane towards the restaurants. Lumb Lane never seems to change – a dimly lit, desolate place - an imposing road with mills on one side and old Victorian houses on the other. Lumb Lane has a colourful past as the red light district of Bradford, and it has scary pubs, and an even scarier traditional curry house – K2.

Next door to the famous Sweet Centre, it is difficult to imagine how K2 remains in business. Although not as popular as it once was, it has a reputation for cheap, basic’ Bradford Curry House’ food – the faded Egon Ronay stickers on the door from the mid ninety’s are tester mount to this faded grandeur, and if you speak to other Bradford curry connoisseurs, they will be aware, and probably have sampled the curry’s K2 .


A small restaurant – perhaps 30 covers or so – we were sat at a large plain wooden table in the window and handed plastic laminated menus. The usual stuff was on offer, with a few ‘chefs specials’ too.

Again, as last month, poppadoms were not brought straight to the table to nibble on whilst reading the menu. Why why why?

I thought the service was generally slow – not too bad if you can enjoy a couple pints but with only a jug of water, time seems to drag slightly.
Poppadoms arrived just before the starters – I shared a mixed starter with Lynda – and found it all a little bland. The only thing with any flavour on our mixed starter was the Shiekh kebab – which was tasty.

My main was Balti Ghost (lamb/mutton) with a garlic nann. Chipatis or rice was included with all mains. My balti did look a little like tinned ‘steak pie filling’ but was tasty enough with had a really meaty taste to it. Nann was fresh and good enough.

Total price was £60 for eight of us – excellent value I thought.
When I went to pay you could see into the kitchen and it was interesting to see just one chef cooking curries in what looked not too dissimilar to a domestic kitchen – probably explained the slowish service.

I am happy with my visit to K2 – it was defo at the ‘basic’ end of the market, and I doubt we will come across a more basic curry house fir the rest of the year!! These places need to be visited though, and it is all experience and non the less

Mission accomplished