A favourite restaurant needn't be the best restaurant. The food needs to be good enough, of course, but it needn't be exceptional. In fact, it probably shouldn't be exceptional, as a favourite restaurant needs to be cheap enough to eat at regularly, rather than as an occasional treat. Service is probably more important when deciding on a favourite restaurant, rather than making a recommendation to a friend of a best restaurant: your favourite restaurant needs to be excessively welcoming, with staff who remember your preferences and greet you as friends, as much as customers. But the service can't be too good, or the place will become busy, and part of what makes it your favourite restaurant is that you can always get a table without booking. Location suddenly becomes much more important than it might be normally: if you can't roll out of the place at midnight, walk home, and be in bed within 30 minutes, then it's unlikely to become a favourite.
I wouldn't therefore always recommend what used to be my favourite restaurant in Oxford - The Indian Room at the Exeter Hall pub on the Cowley Road - to people asking where they should go for dinner. A favourite restaurant is just too personal, and others are unlikely to understand its charms, so you come across as being somewhat ignorant about good food or good service. A favourite restaurant is also an emotional thing: we can get irrationally upset when other people don't like it. We can also have nervous breakdowns when it closes down, as I suffered recently when the Indian Room shut its doors.
I was somewhat wary, therefore, of trying out its sister restaurant, The Royal India. Also based in a pub (The Chequers), but in Headington Quarry, I feared some of the charm of my original would be lost in translation. Luckily, though, some friends recommended it to me, and suggested a group trip, so I could happily go along, without having to accept responsibility if it wasn't as good as I had raved about.
The menu has some more interesting options than your average Indian, several of which we recognised from the Indian Room. I'm not sure I will ever want to try the delightfully 1990s "Olive Chicken", a curry with added olives and sweet chilli sauce, but I would recommend the King Prawn Ruposhi (with mango chutney) or Lamb Rezalla (a fresher, spicier korma equivalent). However, we were there on a Wednesday, so we took advantage of the ridiculously good value "Banquet" option: for less than a tenner, you get a starter, a main, a side to share between two, and rice or naan. This is just silly: you don't get a single main course for that in most Oxford restaurants.
I went for the sheek kebab to start with, which was a little disappointing: dry and overcooked, though revived with an excellent spiced yoghurt sauce. Others went for the vegetable samosas, which arrive as a single magnificent giant samosa (as someone who normally find the filling-to-pastry ratio in samosas way too low, I definitely appreciate the giant samosa school of thought), or the chicken tikka, which was deemed well-spiced and nicely charred.
They definitely have a very very hot oven here; the tandoori prawns I had for my main were likewise gorgeously charred and smoky without, but perfectly cooked within. They came with a massala sauce: normally an english-style gravy I'd steer well clear of, but I'd tried it at the Indian Room and it was just as good here. Sharp with yoghurt, sweet with a little tomato sauce, warmly spiced without burning my tastebuds off, this was comfort food at its absolute best. A (Kiwi) friend, still familiarising herself with Anglo-Indian cuisine, tried her first ever dupiaza and was highly impressed.
The veggie offerings are incredibly wide-ranging: any of the "classic" dishes can be made with vegetables, and any of the vegetable side dishes (seventeen of them) can be served as mains. Particular praise was given to the mutter paneer, or cheesy peas as our beloved Kiwi called them, and the sag daal. Whenever I was ill I used to go to the Indian Room for sag daal; it is one of those nourishing dishes that makes everything better, and the Royal India version is just as lovely. It's reassuring to know that happiness is only a phone call and a 45-minute wait away, as the Royal India (of course) do takeaway.
Of course, it will never be my favourite restaurant, and given the location, I doubt it will be many people's favourite. But if you're in Headington sometime, do pop in.
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