What a year it has been for Achari restaurant on Cotham Hill. In the past few months, owner/chef Kamrul Islam and his team have scooped a handful of prestigious awards, putting it firmly in the premier league of Bristol’s Indian restaurants.
Last November, this modest little restaurant on Cotham Hill was awarded the title of Best Restaurant in the Asian Curry Awards. Kamrul also received the Best Asian Chef Award at the same national awards ceremony held in London.
It came less than a month after the restaurant was also recognised at the BCA Awards from the Bangladeshi Catering Association, winning the gongs for Best Restaurant and Best Chef there, too. And then there’s the consistently high Google reviews – It currently boasts a 4.9 out of 5 rating based on over 2,500 customer reviews.
It’s no wonder it can be so hard to get a table at Achari. I finally managed to get a booking this week but I had tried several times in recent weeks and it had been fully booked each time.
Achari itself opened since the pandemic but Kamrul and his family – who have three other restaurants in Bristol including the excellent Raj Bari in Hotwells – have had the site since 1992. It started life as Indian Ocean and was one of the original curry houses that forged Cotham Hill’s early 1990s reputation as Bristol’s equivalent of Birmingham’s ‘curry mile’.
A compact one-room restaurant with an open kitchen at the end, Achari has a contemporary look. One wall is covered with black and white photos of Indian street scenes, another is plastered with colourful Bollywood film posters.
Another reason the restaurant is so popular in tough economic times is the fact it’s BYO so customers can bring their own booze if they want. That’s certainly a game changer for the local students and there was a table of 14 university lads there on the evening we visited, each clutching their lager four-packs.
The menu brings together the dishes of India and Bangladesh and prices are surprisingly affordable compared to many of its competitors. There is also a section of traditional curry house favourites – you could have a chicken bhuna for £9.95 or a lamb rogan josh for £10.95 – that’s almost 1990s prices.
Another popular option is the £14.95 student deal. That comprises a starter of chicken tikka or onion bhaji with one traditional curry, rice or bread.
The young couple on the next table were taking advantage of the ‘feast for two’, which costs a very enticing £39.95. That features two poppadoms, two starters, two traditional curries, one side dish and any two choices from the rice or bread section.
We kicked off with two of the vegan options. Not because they were vegan but because they sounded two of the more interesting starters and they were.
The Gobi Manchurian (£5.50) was a delicious dish of cauliflower florets sautéed in a mildly spiced, fragrant sauce topped with finely snipped spring onions. Aloo tikki chaat (£6) was a generous starter of delicately spiced potato patties with a tangy tamarind sauce studded with chickpeas.
Also from the starters was the chilli chicken (£6.95) which lived up to its promise as one of the more fiery dishes on offer. The bite-size pieces of crisp and sticky chicken were tossed in a thick chilli garlic sauce with onions and green pepper for crunch.
From the mains, we tried three of the most popular customer favourites. Nali Gosht (£10.95) – a dish from Lucknow – featured pieces of seriously tender lamb in a creamy, mildly spiced sauce thickened with yogurt and lots of coriander.
Keralan fish curry (£10.95) was another winner. The perfectly cooked fillet of sea bass had been cooked in rich coconut and tamarind sauce with real depth of flavour.
And there was the mango chicken curry (£10.95) – the thick pieces of tender chicken in a tangy mango sauce that relied on fresh mango, rather than pulp, and it gave it a more savoury and less sweet taste than expected. A really interesting dish that worked brilliantly. We mopped it up with fluffy pilau rice (£3.50) and duvet-sized garlic naan breads (£3.50).
If there was a common thread between the dishes, however, it was the perfect balance of flavours and the intelligent, pin-sharp spicing.
It’s no wonder Achari keeps winning so many awards, and why tables are increasingly hard to book – but it’s more than worth the extra effort and those wallet-friendly prices are ridiculous whichever way you look at them.
Achari, 44 Cotham Hill, Bristol, BS6 6LA. Tel: 0117 9237861.