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1/59 Hardgrave Rd, West End Qld

This restaurant bills itself as ‘Tibetan, Nepalese, Sherpa’, but after an introductory plate of spring rolls the food we enjoyed was from the subcontinental side of the menu. We chose two types of dahl, one plain (with ginger, garlic, tomatoes and onions) and the other of fresh spinach plus all-of-the-above. It’s a good dahl, thick almost to the consistency of porridge, straightforward rather than delicate in its flavour, and generously served in deep bowls. As main dishes we went for Aloo Chanako, a dry chickpea and potato curry with ginger and garlic, and the sweetish Pharsi Ko Tarkari of pumpkin with mustard seeds, chillis and onions. Both dishes came with lashings of fresh coriander which complemented them well. As the restaurant says, this is food from the top of the world, and there’s a hearty, sustaining, keep-out-the-cold feeling about it one imagines being very appropriate to the Himalayas. But this doesn’t keep it from being a most welcome meal on a winter’s night in a much more temperate part of the world!

Every year, hundreds of thousands of bulls die in the name of entertainment. But this may change because the Catalonian government is on the verge of voting for a ban on bullfighting.

Please join the WSPA campaign to URGE THE CATALONIAN PARLIAMENT TO END THE BLOOD SPORT OF BULLFIGHTING!

After a huge anti-cruelty campaign by the Catalonian public, the regional parliament will vote on July 28th whether to ban bullfights for good. You can sign a petition to let every Catalonian MP know there are thousands of people around the world who want to end this cruel ’sport’.  Go to http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/191/648/950?z00m=19868613 to sign your name.  But hurry!

14B Station Rd, Indooroopilly Qld

The menu at the Indooroopilly Sun Fay is vastly more extensive than that at the similarly named restaurant in nearby Taringa, and offers veggie diners all kinds of possibilities. You can order greens (we chose bak choi, but others are available) with garlic sauce. These can also be served with ‘oyster’ sauce, which may or not be made from real oysters, so that in the latter case it would be suitable for vegetarians…on the whole I prefer to avoid dishes concocted to resemble things I choose not to eat, but opinions differ on this score. The salt and pepper bean curd is tasty and goes well with the greens, although veggie diners will want to avoid the bed on which it sits. But the highlight of our meal was the chilli pepper soup, dark red in colour, sharp to the taste, and full of soft tofu, wonderfully hearty and satisfying on a cold evening. This soup deserves to be far better known than it is!

Shop 2E/, 197 Church Rd, Taigum Qld

It’s amazing how thoroughly the potato, only introduced to India towards the end of the eighteenth century by the British (the benefits of Empire!), has been assimilated into the cuisine of the Subcontinent, and when the VVOC inspection team, lovers of that vegetable, visited the Deep Curry House it ordered both aloo saag and aloo ghobi (the latter is not on the menu, but the cook kindly prepared it on request.) The dishes were excellent, the spinach beautifully smooth and the cauliflower oddly crunchy in a very satisfying way. We also enjoyed the vegetable curry and the channa masala of chickpeas and spices (and more potatoes!) The rice that accompanied the dishes was itself tasty, being flavoured with cardamon, cumin seeds and cloves. Our enthusiasm for these dishes was the more significant because we had already tucked away with great appreciation serves of samosas, pakoras and onion bhaajis. An excellent meal, one enjoyed to the accompaniment of an interesting commentary from our friendly waitress.