There will always be Brick Lane: Valentine's at City Spice

One of the biggest tests I put to restaurants is to provide me with a completely tomatoless dish, that, maybe after a moment of bewilderment, is put together with enthusiasm and perhaps a little creativity. That's if there's not something suitable and wonderful on the menu already. I don't believe anyone should have to put up with something that's been thrown together with resentment or a second class finish rate, because my (or your) ridiculous needs are annoying. If they are in fact so annoying that simply nothing can be made for me in a style that's going to be nice to eat, I'd rather be told by the restaurant that actually, I'd better go somewhere else.

So with all this said, why - why - do I keep returning to Brick Lane? I have had more fresh tomatoes coming up next to me bhajis than I've chosen to believe. There is certainly an undeniable charm to the place (charm in the sense where there are people shouting at you from all angles to convince you to come to their restaurant), a neon horizon that welcomes you vividly to East London, and I guess you just can't beat a rice, naan, starter, main AND bottle of wine for a tenner (or £12 on  busier night).

It's not necessarily the best place for my nerves, though. I always get an intense trepidation that actually, despite my explanations, there's a big squirt of tomato puree swimming around in that earthy-coloured sauce. I worry that each dish is made in a huge vat and there's no resource, space or desire to make me something from scratch if the original recipe contains those juicy fiends. One day, my mind was put at ease slightly...

A group of friends and I got in the middle of what was very nearly a full-on fight between two Brick Lane restaurateurs, wrestling for our custom. One promised a cheaper deal, the other promised more - and better quality - wine. Being an already tipsy mix of English, Irish, Brazilian and French people, we opted for the deal with the wine and promptly chose our starters, mains, rices etc. There was no tomato served with my bhajis... I was in a place which heeded my plight and I appreciated that. Three bottles of wine later and after several debates with various people in the restaurant, the waiter offered to take us down into the kitchen! This statement, in my opinion, deserves much more exclamation marks, but grammatically I can only give it one. A Brick Lane kitchen! I'd heard rumours, the ones we've all heard that we don't want to believe. Greasy spaces, old, non-fresh ingredients, I'd even heard about one massive long kitchen that spanned underneath the whole of this East End street... and am delighted to say that none of them are true. The kitchen was relatively small, super clean, and vibrant with fresh ingredients and spices. The waiter challenged me to taste all the spices and guess them (I got them all right, FYI) and I got a little taste of a freshly made gulapjamon. I even stepped into the fridge. This, tomatophobes and tomatophiles, was a place which could very easily - and happily it seemed - adapt well-known recipes in a fresh way and serve them up to needy customer like myself. People - Brick Lane is the dealtastic, fountain of Indian food that we all dared to hope it might be!

This why me and the VT-BF chose to go back on Valentine's Day. The beginning of 2014 had not been kind financially and we were ready to treat ourselves to some cheap but nice food. Coming from the Shoreditch end, we settled for the very first deal that came to us, which was from City Spice, as the VT-BF was too hungry for banter. We've been to this one a few times and really enjoy it - the set menu isn't limited to your usual dhansaks, masalas etc, and the owner is great - I think he's been there over 20 years.

Unfortunately - and I use that word with all passion and seriousness - the food wasn't quite up there this time.It was the one occasion we chose to omit the onion bhajis so I'm happy to accept some of the blame. The fried potato cakes came up with a nice chunk of fresh tomato and tasted a bit school dinner. The aubergine dahl that I got was pretty nice, as was the beautifully fragranced pilau rice, and there weren't too many complaints to go with the VT-BF's Butter Chicken, but the wine wasn't up to scratch (I know you can't really expect it to be - but 'actual nice quality wine' was one of the conditions of that night's offer!).

But do you know what, it was Valentine's Day, we've had nice wine there before... I'm not usually so lenient but I'm happy to suggest this one time was a slight glitch. You should still go to City Spice, and all the other restaurants in Brick Lane, because... you just should. And that's a valid reason, it really is.

Would I recommend this restaurant? Yes, I got a tomato with my second rate potato, but this is one time I don't care quite so much. Yes, go - go now!