CHEEKY CURRY
My favourite Tooting curry house varies according to mood, but this month Amma, on the Mitcham Road, has a pretty strong claim. It serves rich (but rarely unsubtle), tasty South Indian food which is just right for chilly evenings – its selection of starting ‘fries’ hits the spot particularly well (fish fry, squid fry, chicken liver fry – all delicious). Like a lot of South Indian restaurants, though, it seems to frown a little bit on poppadums, serving them on sufferance because that’s what curry houses do, but not with enthusiasm – it would much rather you went for one of its (enormous) dosais. The chutney boats available at South Indian places are often perfunctory – the mango, the green one, maybe some kind of lime chutney if you’re lucky – but Amma goes one cheekier. Spooning an intriguing looking red sauce onto the poppadums we all realised pretty much simultaneously that this traditional Indian spice was in fact value ketchup.