You know how there are always things you tell yourself that will change - usually involving exercise, eatin, kindness to others and cleaning out the dishwasher filter - but where you just can't seem to adjust your behaviour ?

Well, mea culpa, mine is the predictability of the food I order from Indian restaurants, and after a recent visit to House of Flavours, I suspect that I am not alone.

Yes, I order the same old dishes every time until, on that day when you return from the pub full of Dutch courage (are we still allowed to use that phrase ? Sorry, Netherlanders...) and order something a bit different with three chillies next to it, only to be disappointed and then return to form with your next order.

But I know I am not alone. A recent visit to the venerable institution down King's Road revealed that everyone around the table was a creature of habit when it comes to being faced with an extensive Indian restaurant menu.

HoF is a bit difficult to define in Indian restaurant terms. It is surrounded by more niche offerings such as Paprika (Keralan, although now deviating), Coconut Tree (Sri Lankan), SVMH (Mumbai street food) and Madras Flavours (Tamil / Southern Indian). Round the corner is the epitome of traditional British Indian Restaurants, the Royal Tandoori, and I'm not even going to venture down King's Walk, nor, of course, even mention Clay's, which long ago left the area for the exalted environs of Caversham.

The menu at HoF is extensive yet familiar. It ranges through most of the BIR (that's British Indian Restaurant) favourites through the tandoor oven, veers up north to Nepal and its Indo-Chinese cuisine (although it has to be pointed out that in India you go out for a Chinese in the way that we, er, go out for an Indian in the UK).

Then there are the Hyderebadi favourites, including dum biryani, of course, with a Scottish salmon curry thrown in for good measure.

There is Tawa Tak-a-Tak, tawa being the precursor of the balti, probably originating from Iran but now is a smallish skillet used in similar cuisine around the world. Tak-a-Tak is a term from northern Pakistan which onomatopoeically describes the sound of meat being cut in the tawa. In other words, a dry sizzling meat dish. At HoF you can also get lobster and paneer versions.

Salmon curry (they sometimes have an excellent one down the road at Coconut Tree), Lobster Tak-a-Tak, other unfamiliar listings on the menu ? They were all considered but, inevitably, I landed on Chicken Jalfrezi. How predictable..

My better half and I were dining out with a couple of friends she had made online during lockdown whilst playing the Harry Potter version of the Pokémon game. Back then I remember feeling a bit jealous and concerned, in the way that any fourteen year old's parents would do as they tapped away in their bedroom with strangers they did not know, not quite whispering under the sheets, but you get my drift.... Then there were the walks to pick up virtual things in real places, which was a great excuse to get out of the house to hot spots like the Gas Works Bridge.... No, I'm not even going to pretend to understand. I gave up at Wii. But she has made lifelong friends from that game.

We had fed and put up three of her gaming mates as they did a homage tour to Harry Potter involving railway platforms, studio tours and West End plays (but somehow missed the open air cinema showing of Philosopher's Stone at Reading Abbey ruins, unfortunately).

S had gone back to Aberdeen, leaving R from Australia and T from Southend. To thank us they decided to treat us to a meal out, and after cooking pizza and spaghetti and chilli all week I was grateful for a break.

So where do you take people in East Reading these days ? Everyone craved an Indian and I decided to go safe. House of Flavours it was.

And boy, what an institution HoF is. It was heaving on a Wednesday night with a large contingency of local Indian people out for the night (always A Good Thing of course).

Something that I have never had to mention before in these pages is how restaurants cope with food allergies. You are asked everywhere these days about your 'food allergies' and in some places practically have to pass a medical before they will hand over the menu (there was one particularly intense experience at a Miller & Carter that I shall recount at a later date).

R is both gluten and lactose intolerant. Not in a 'oh gosh, she breathed in some flour, pass me the epi pen' way, but careful of what she eats now that she is in her seventies, still bravely seeking out new adventures on the other side of her world.

When we informed the polite, efficient, very smiley and friendly waiting staff a folder appeared.

I thought this would be an alternative menu. But no, it was page after page of spreadsheets listing every dish and its allergen make up.

In a rather dim restaurant I was frankly glad R was sitting next to the lamp and had her glasses on.

When it comes to this issue, restaurants are caught between a rock and a hard place and I find it difficult to come up with a better idea than this toxic matrix to cater for such allergies when some of our friends fall ill if they encounter a tomato and others a cashew.... Indian food is complex and combines so many ingredients that the business school approach seemed the best way forward.

Which segues nicely into what happened when we ordered. I did that thing where the Cobra beer welled up inside me and instead of saying 'Chicken Jalfrezi', I said 'Chicken Lababdar', which is flavoured with, yes, you're way ahead of me here, cashews and tomatoes and 'delicately spiced'. Dear reader, I changed my mind and went off piste...

However, the adventure ended there. The other dishes ordered were Butter Chicken, Chicken Biryani, Chicken Shashlik, Lamb Rogan Josh, Mushroom and Cumin Rice, Plain Rice, Keema Naan and Garlic and Coriander Naan. The biryani came with Raita to top up predictability of the order. it might have been a Indian meal for two' from a supermarket apart from the lack of Tikka Masala.



But this is where HoF excels. We may have gone middle of the road, but HoF went further. Most of the dishes were termed 'a notch above' by all our crew.

Butter Chicken is flavour of the day, and even in India has become the staple main course a restaurant is measured by. I would challenge anyone to improve on this version with its James Martin quantity of butter making it silky in the mouth with just the right balance of tomato tang and gentle spicing. 

The portions at HoF are very generous but R, despite her compact stature, managed to polish off the lot, leaving only the scraping of the bowl with naan bread in envy for the rest of us.

The Shashlik was heavily marinated in yoghurt and spices and came with some peppers. T loved it and finished his huge dish with aplomb. Personally, I would have been disappointed. I prefer a balance of onion, peppers and tomato. And less marinade with some juices seeping out to be soaked up by rice. Smaller pieces cooked quicker may have been less dry to the taste (the marinade had done a decent job of sealing in what moisture there was within what  amounted to very large pieces of chicken breast).



The naan, however, was utterly delicious. I have recently taken to making naan in our pizza oven, but mine uses the venerable Madhur Jaffreys' nearly cake-like recipe - thick and pillowy. At HoF it is thin and soft and garlicky. Their keema naan was amongst the best breadstuffs I have ever eaten. The garlic and coriander naan was also a notch or three above that found elsewhere, although, again, I think this may be a matter of personal taste.

My wife's rogan josh (yes, she always orders onion bhaji, rogan josh and mushroom pilau) was very rich and deep with melt in the mouth lamb. This has the depth of a sauce that had been on the go for a very long time. But after the third mouthful I found it almost too heavy with pepper and cinnamon and cloves and cardamom overwhelming the subtle tomato base that is the signature of this dish. My wife loved it, again proving that this is a matter of taste.

However, her mushroom and cumin seed pilau rice was considered inferior to that which we order from River Spice.

My Lababdar hit the spot, although, again the generous pieces of chicken were a tad dry.

And so onto that most contentious of all Mughlai dishes - the dum biryani. The banquet dish of princes has become an everyday order and what you usually get is actually pilau rice cooked on the hob and finished in the oven and not pastry sealed and cooked in dum pots. This was proper, but the table had insisted on chicken not lamb, a cardinal mistake in my book, and there were too many dead hens on the table for my taste. We are a carnivorous nation, but a balance of veg dishes is always to be recommended at an Indian restaurant in my opinion for a better variety of textures and flavours. But old habits die hard...

The point about biryani is that it is not the everyday dish it has become - some rice cooked in spice juices in a sealed jar in an oven with some onion temper thrown on top. That should be just the base. Then it should be sprinkled with nuts and raisins and pomegranate seeds and chopped herbs. The best Biryanis I have tasted have been at Indian weddings in the north of the country where this dish is still exalted.

The rooms with their high ceilings are very loud, and even without piped music us oldies were finding it difficult to hear each other by this stage with the restaurant absolutely packed. 

Photos were taken by the ever smiling busy, but efficient staff. The bill was paid. Doggie bags were stuffed (apart from R, who obviously knew that with her flight home the following day she would not be able to repatriate her leftovers when she polished off her dishes) and we headed out onto a drizzly Kings Road, noticing how disappointingly empty Papadams and the Coconut Tree were. I suspect Reading has reached peak South Asian in terms of the sheer number of restaurants it can support.

We are all creatures of habit, and trying to open a new Indian restaurant is a brave enterprise in such a crowded market, especially since we all agreed that HoF is a notch above the rest.