Janet Hewison unwinds at an Indian restaurant in York where you can bring your own beer

FOR a good place to wind down after a week at work away from the city centre crowds, you can't do much better than the York Tandoori Restaurant in Lowther Street. We visited on a Friday evening after a trip to York City Screen in Coney Street. On leaving the cinema, the town centre was already filling up with people in transit from pub to pub.

But it was a different story when we arrived in The Groves, where I had booked a table at the York Tandoori for 9pm.

All was quiet apart from a few people gathered around the entrance to the Spar shop, which is a few doors down from the restaurant in a row of unremarkable shop fronts.

The York Tandoori is unlicensed, so the Spar is a handy place to stock up on drinks, and we spent £5.94 on six bottles of lager.

We were shown straight to a table when we arrived at the restaurant, which was three quarters full, including a party of around 16 people.

The waiter was straight back over with a bottle opener, two menus, a quick smile and no fuss, and I could feel myself winding down already.

The decor was relatively no fuss too; pale pink walls, burgundy table cloths, fresh flowers in simple vases and candles on the tables.

The only exceptions were a pleated curtain arrangement in the ceiling and a dark-green water feature, the sound of its trickling water mingling with the background Indian music.

There wasn't long to wait between ordering and the food arriving. We started off with papadoms, just two of them, as we had plans for three courses, followed swiftly by our starters, vegetable pakora (£1.95) for my dining partner Mike, and vegetable samosa (£1.95) for me, which came with a minty sauce.

My samosa was a monster - it looked more like a Cornish pastie than the small crispy triangles you usually get - and was stuffed with vegetables. Mike's pakora met with approval too.

The main courses arrived quickly afterwards. I had ordered chicken tikka (£5) from the tandoori specialities section of the menu, and it arrived sizzling on a skewer before being piled up on my plate with juicy pieces of onion. There was an accompanying salad and small dish of minty yoghurt sauce.

I had ordered a cucumber raitha (50p) to accompany my starter and main course, but hadn't needed to as both came with a sauce included, which doesn't always happen.

The chicken tikka was lovely, marinated enough so it wasn't dry, not too hot (there is a hot chicken tikka option as well) and light enough so I could enjoy most of the plain naan (£1.25) I'd ordered too.

Mike's main course took up most of the table. He went for special vegetable thali (£6.85) from the specialities menu, which consisted of a vegetable curry, mushroom bhaji, tarka dahl (a lentil dish) and vegetable pilau rice.

I tried a bit of all of them, in the line of duty, and each dish had a distinctive flavour. The bhaji, packed with mushrooms and spinach, was particularly good.

We had to sacrifice some of the vegetable dishes and the naan to fit in desserts, chosen from a short menu consisting mainly of standard frozen options, which cost £4.15 for two.

I had a mint chocolate bombe - green mint ice cream covered in choc-ice style chocolate. Mike asked for almond kulfi, offered as one of three flavours, but settled for mango because they didn't have almond.

The waiting staff left us to sit around finishing our lager for some time after we'd finished and I noticed that most of the table of 16 who had been there when we arrived were still drinking and chatting when we finished eating, without being bothered.

Our bill came to £23.20, which together with the lager from the Spar, brought the cost of the meal to just under £30.

Students would have paid even less, according to a sign outside advertising ten per cent off for eating in.

I felt the York Tandoori offered value for money, with most main courses to eat in about £4 or £5. And I felt like I'd had a good meal, without being stuffed. In fact I still had enough room for a few more lagers so, after settling the bill, we made a return trip to the Spar on the way home.

Fact file:

Food: fair to good

Service: fast and no fuss

Value: excellent

Ambience: relaxing

No disabled access

York Tandoori Restaurant and Takeaway, Mansfield House, Lowther Street, 01904 653183 or 672588.

Updated: 09:10 Saturday, May 11, 2002