Lahore Kebab House

Address: 2-10 Umberston Street, E1 1PY (there's also a sister restaurant in Streatham - 668 Streatham High Road, SW16 3QL - which we haven't visited)
Website: http://www.lahore-kebabhouse.com/
Nearest tube station: Aldgate East (just under 10 minutes' walk) or Whitechapel (just over 10 minutes' walk)

Restaurant review number 5 is the Lahore Kebab House, which is neither in Lahore (obviously) nor a kebab house (less obviously). It is, in fact, a bring-your-own curry restaurant in the East End, reckoned to be one of the best in London, along with nearby Tayyab's. I was glad to get here after our failed attempt to review a curry house during National Curry Week.

Mrs BYO and I walked there after work on a cold Monday evening in December. The restaurant shouldn't be hard to find and is accessible at the top of Umberston Street, just off Commercial Road - despite Google Maps' attempt to send us down a dimly-lit side street.

When we arrived, we were swiftly seated in the large ground floor dining room, a rather plain room with flatscreen TVs on the wall. Directly behind our table was a huge window looking into the kitchen, showing off huge stacks of papadoms. So that's what we started with - accompanied by the normal dips and salad - together with a portion of onion bhajia to share. Rather than the bland, greasy balls of fried onion that I'm used to in curry houses, the onion bhajia here was chunks of nicely-spiced fried onion. Delicious.

As we've already established, I can't handle spicy food. So, for a main course, I had butter chicken (hey, at least it wasn't a korma). My butter chicken was excellent, just the right level of spiciness and not the bland, sweet dish that I often find from curry houses and takeaways.

Mrs BYO, who is more adventurous than me, had bhindi chicken, an okra-based chicken dish. If you love okra and you like a bit (but not too much spice) and lots of flavour to your curry then this is the one for you. She said that she hadn’t tasted anything like it anywhere else and it was a real treat to have something different to the norm.

For sides, we shared a pilau rice and a cheese naan, which tasted good but was a bit too oily for my liking.

For all of that food, it was a very good value £25.40 - excluding tip, which was not automatically added. Even better, there's no corkage.

To drink, we took big bottles of Kingfisher (a bargain at £1.99 each from Waitrose in St Katharine Docks). I thought an Indian beer would go nicely with a curry (yes, I know Lahore isn't in India), with the choice in the shop being between Kingfisher and Cobra. And since the worst advert of all time (Meet The Boss), I refuse to buy Cobra. I think the advertising executives may have had a few too many beers when they made it.

Nearby shops for your booze include Cobra Food and Wine (yes, that Cobra) the other side of Umberston Street or a huge Sainsbury's almost next to Whitechapel if you're coming from that direction.