Curry Leaf Cafe Review | Brighton*

The Curry Leaf Cafe* in Brighton is celebrating its fifth birthday this year and, to celebrate, they’ve recently undergone a massive refurbishment of the Ship Street branch!! I headed over there last week to check it, and their lunch menu, out 🙂

The Curry Leaf Cafe is renowned for its South Indian street food and they not only have two restaurants; the Ship Street one (number 60) and one over in Kemptown (at 40 Upper St James’s Street), but they also have two kiosks; one at Brighton Station and one outside H&M at Churchill Square.

The restaurant itself is absolutely beautiful and full of character. Every corner of the room is slightly different; I love the art on this wall ♥ And I’m totally coveting those lamp shades!!

The menus are incredibly detailed and show all their gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan dishes really clearly. They also state which dishes contain nuts! I was also told, during my time there, that the menus at the restaurants are actually different, so there’s even more choice, depending which branch you choose!!

As I’d only had a small breakfast I decided to get something from the street food menu and a main dish too 🙂

I chose the chicken lollipops as my starter as they sounded absolutely incredible 😀 The chicken is first marinated in ginger, garlic, a gluten-free soy sauce, some lemon juice, rice flour and cornflour. They’re then deep-fried and finished off by being coated in a sticky, sweet-and-sour garlic and chilli sauce!

I’m really glad I picked these as they were just as amazing as I’d hoped they’d be! The chicken was wonderfully crispy on the outside and soft and tender inside. The marinade was delicious and thankfully not as spicy as I was expecting it to be 😀 I enjoyed these so much, I think I could eat them every day!

I asked what they would recommend for a main course and was told that the thalis were amazing. You get a choice of curry plus saffron rice and loads of little extras, it’s perfect if you wanted to share a small meal with someone or wanted to devour a large meal on your own lol.

I went for the vegan shahi mushroom which has wild mushrooms, chestnut mushrooms and potato cooked in an onion, ginger, tomato and garlic sauce. It’s further flavoured with roasted cumin, garam masala and chilli.

The platter also comes with a mixed vegetable pickle, a garlic and mint raita, tinda masala, spinach daal, tomato rasam, a green vegetable fritter and for pudding there’s a tiny goulab (like a condensed milk pudding). The dish also comes with poddadums and naan bread!

The meal was absolutely amazing and I loved all the different elements to it! The curry was tasty and not too spicy for me, I loved the mushrooms and big chunks of potato running through the dish. I think my favourite side was the spinach daal 😀

I couldn’t finish all of it but, as the restaurant is all about street food, they have plenty of containers to box up the leftovers so you can take it home with you!! Which is exactly what I did and I gave mine to J ♥ He really enjoyed it too although found it slightly hotter than I did. He also really loved the lollipops!

I’ll definitely be recommending the restaurant to everyone I know and I’m hoping I can take my parents there next time they’re visiting 🙂 Thank you so much to the restaurant for having me 🙂

Have you been to the Curry Leaf Cafe before? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below 🙂 x

*I was invited by the venue to review but all views are my own.

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