Avatar, Shrewsbury - food review

Let's start with the things that Avatar is not. It's not, by any stretch of the imagination, a fine dining restaurant. And lord only knows why it would aspire to be.

Avatar's not-particularly-good website advertises the restaurant as being a fine dining emporium, presumably because it thinks it'll put more bums on seats. I'm not sure it will.

Why anyone thinks it's a good idea to take the brilliantly vibrant, fire-crackling flavours that might be served on some Nepalese roadside and stick them in a starchy room with Villeroy and Boch cutlery is anyone's guess. It isn't a good idea. It's madness. It's pretence gone mad. It's a marketing man's worst idea since the one he had yesterday.

And, happily, though Avatar brands itself as a fine dining restaurant, it patently isn't. The only genuine fine dining southern Asian restaurant in these parts is Aktar Islam's brilliant-but-expensive Lasan, in Birmingham, where the flavours and presentation are as other-worldly and revealing as the Mars probe.

There's nothing to distinguish Avatar's interior, in truth, from the herd. It looks like a dozen other Shropshire curry houses. And while service is pretty good, the thing that sets it apart is its food. But don't be misled into thinking it'll offer you some sort of faux Michelin experience for the price of a new CD. It won't. It'll give you great flavours, something different and precise cooking – and truthfully, for the price of a new CD, that's a damn bargain. Go eat. And forget the nonsense marketing speak.

The delicious and delightful Avatar opened a couple of years ago, bringing Nepalese cuisine to Shrewsbury. Just ignore the website and its boastful braggadocio. Instead, go and enjoy what Avatar does best – the food.

By all accounts, Avatar has been a hit. Even the keyboard warriors who populate the dark corridors of TripAdvisor seem to like it, awarding it an average 4.5/5 and ranking it 12th in Shrewsbury, which isn't far off. I reckon that mark's a tad on the high side – TripAdvisor marks usually are – though the ranking is about right.

On the evening that I called in, the restaurant was almost full. And any restaurant that can pack them in on a Wednesday night when the temperatures are sub-zero has got to be doing something right. While other chefs twiddled their thumbs and checked their seasonings, the Avatar crew were smashing out dishes like Kalashnikov-wielding gunmen shooting clay pigeons.

Food flew out at a fair old pace and the room was full of contented smiles and happy eating noises – you know the sort, dreamy 'hhhhmmms' and ever-so-slightly ecstatic 'ooohs'. It wasn't quite the same as being with Meg Ryan on the set of When Harry Met Sally, but it wasn't far off, either.

Since its launch, Avatar's food has been consistent, service remains on point and it offers something out of the ordinary.

It's a regular, neighbourhood curry house offering something slightly different, standards that are above the average and a neat line in regional specials.

Though it serves archetypal curry house staples – balti, pathia, dansak, dopiaza, rogan josh and a decent bhuna – the real action is on its list of innovative dishes. That's where its chefs have full reign to serve up the authentic flavours of Nepal, rather than westernised versions of stuff that you'd never find in a million years in Kathmandu.

Avatar also takes it up a notch from the also-rans by offering more than the traditional airline-style 'chicken or beef' options. So instead of those – and prawns – we have guinea fowl, venison, monkfish and, if you really want it, lobster. The lobster, I might warn you, is served with garlic, sweet chilli, dill and Grand Marnier. It sounds awful – how on earth would the sweet flavour of lobster stand up against that little lot?

Dinner was delightful. I was escorted to a window seat and enjoyed the regulation poppadoms with chutneys and relishes that were better than average while perusing the menu.

I skipped the traditional menus – we all know what a vegetable samosa tastes like – and went straight for the house specials, opting for a Himalayan street dish called Momo. Momo comprises steamed dumplings with a filling of minced chicken with onion, coriander and garam masala. It was served with a tomato and sesame seed chutney. And it was delightful. It was a sort-of Himalayan equivalent of an Italian ravioli or a Thai dumpling. The dough was a little thick and sticky, but the filling and sauce were a treat. Delicate and subtle, the meat was light and savoury while the sauce was combined sweetness and heat.

My main was thoroughly enjoyable. A Haravara chicken featured tender breast meat that had been cooked with fresh mint, green mango and spring onion. It was served with Nepalese spices and light brown rice. And for good measure, Mr Piggy Grunt ordered a naan to scoop up the sauce.

The curry was good. The onions and mango gave it a delightful sweetness that was counterbalanced by the gentle heat of the spring onion and fresh fragrance of the mint. The naan was delightful. Sweet, buttery and light – it was one of God's pillows, sent by his Food Angels.

A word on service. Staff at Avatar wear traditional Nepalese dress and look fantastic. Their bright colours and embroidered fabrics were straight from the pages of the Georgio Nepali – see what we did there, ha, it's almost like we know what we're doing, though why we haven't made a Sam Worthington-and-Sigourney Weaver mention somewhere along here defeats me.

And that, as they say, was that: decent food and not a piece of Villeroy and Boch cutlery in sight. Avatar is all about decent service from staff who smile, who don't mess about, who are efficient and who keep the show on the road.

It's about delightful food from chefs who cook precisely, who make sure chickens are tender and not dry and whose elegant and meticulous flavourings knock the spots off the stew-like curries at lesser venues. Avatar might be wide of the mark when it describes itself as fine dining. But it offers dining that is mighty fine.

By Andy Richardson