Indigo Whitefield Review

I have a friend who goes to Indigo religiously every single Friday evening and he absolutely loves it. I have been once before and I did enjoy the food but I wouldn’t have said it was worthy of weekly visits. We decided to give it another try last Saturday to see if things had perhaps changed since our first visit and my friend knew something we didn’t.

Indigo is located right on the border of Whitefield and Bury, at Blackford Bridge in a very large purpose built building that has been home to a number of restaurants previously, the most memorable and longest standing being the Italian restaurant Est Est Est. Although situated on a busy main road, there is plenty of parking in the large car park at the rear of the restaurant.

The interior is generally well kept but there is just something about it that seems a little uninviting, I really can’t put my finger on what it is. It’s not dark, its not dirty and its not smelly, in fact it is very clean. Just something seems a little of and makes the place lack atmosphere but I don’t know what it is.

The staff at Indigo are all very welcoming and helpful, although we were asked by 5 different waiters if the food was ok which although attentive was just a little overbearing.

We ordered poppadoms, onion bhajis and vegetable samosas for starters, all of which were very nice. The onion bhajis were a particular favourite,  crispy and not too spicy, like others I have had elsewhere.

We had two non-meat eaters in our party and they were more than happy with the selection for vegetarians, one chose the Muttor Paneer, a North Indian dish consisting of peas and paneer (Indian soft cheese) in a tomato based sauce, spiced with garam masala whilst the other vegetarian chose the mushroom bhaji.

I sent my friend a text message asking what he would recommend seeing as he is here every week but he didn’t reply until after we had left the restaurant, funnily enough what he recommended was what I had picked; Chicken Afghani, a dish of chillis, ginger, garlic and onions in the chefs special Afghani sauce. I have no idea what the Afghani sauce is but it was delicious, sweet and sour Indian style, very tangy with a nice spicy kick. There was plenty of chicken and it was very soft and tender.

Chicken Afghani

My girlfriend ordered prawn dupiaza from the traditional curries menu which unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to sample; this usually means she really enjoyed it. From what I could see, it did look very nice, not too oily like many curries can be and there were also plenty of prawns.

Prawn Dupiaza

We ordered some accompaniments of garlic rice, mushroom rice, pilau rice and garlic naan bread but we left quite a lot as the curries were really quite filling.

Overall we really enjoyed it at Indigo and I can see why my friend would go regularly; it is close by for him and the food really is delicious. There are so many Indian restaurants to choose from in the Whitefield area, some better than others but why risk going to one of the not so good ones when you have a great one on your door step?