We last visited this restaurant over a year ago - though then it was called Osmania. It's now the Lahore, but it's owned by the same people, the chef is the same, and the fare is still below average. After our last visit, we wrote, "We thought the standard of the fare on offer at the Osmania was pretty poor... On this showing, we cannot bring ourselves to recommend it... The service was friendly, but slow." Nothing much has changed.

The starters were good, however: onion bhaji (£1.00), aloo pakora (£1.00), and veg samosa (£1.00). The bhajis were the best we've tasted in a while: a good portion of heavy, strongly spiced balls packed with onion and fried to just the right consistency. The aloo pakora were great, too: the potato well-cooked and the spices pungent. The samosas consisted of very light, thin pastry with a spicy-hot peas, potato and carrot filling. All in all a very enjoyable entrée.

To say that our main dishes were a disappointment would be an understatement.

My vegetable makhani was pretty grim. It was prepared with fresh cream, cashews, almonds, and lightly spiced. The vegetables, such as they were - I could only distinguish cauliflower and courgette in the slop - were boiled to an unappetising mush, and the dish was so mild as to be almost tasteless. Pretty awful - I couldn't finish it. The chicken masala was only a little better, the chicken being a little on the tough side, the sauce too mild. The balti matar paneer was disappointing: bland, overcooked, the cheese rubbery and tasteless. The veg jalfrezi was very poor, over eggy and bland, and lacked richness and distinctiveness. One of us tried to buffet (but there was only one vegetarian dish among six): the channa was above average, highly spiced, in a good sauce; the keema was only mediocre.

The food might be cheap (in fact, the prices have dropped since a year ago), but even so we cannot bring ourselves to recommend the Lahore, even to Curry Completists. With so many better restaurants in the area - the Royal Balti and Omar's down the street, the Kashmir and Omar Khan's nearby - it's a wonder the place remains open. (They do a cheap buffet: £3.99 for all you can eat, which evidently attracts the students.)

(All main dishes are served with a choice of three chapattis or boiled rice.)

Osmania is a new restaurant at the busy end of Great Horton Road, one of four in what is fast becoming the curry row of the city. It might sound like the fan club of a certain sixties singing family, but rest assured that it's nothing but a curry house serving - "A true taste of home cooking" according to their own publicity blurb.

It's a comfortable, pleasantly atmospheric place, and it was busy the night we dined. The service was friendly, but slow.

The starters were good. Chicken pakora (£2.00), aloo kebab (£1.30), paneer kebab (£1.30). The chicken came in nice chunks, moist and flavoursome; the aloo dish was burger-shaped and well-flavoured with coriander, and the paneer kebab, while not exactly living up to its billing - "cheese marinated with spices and grilled with peppers and onions" (and nothing like a kebab!) - was pleasing in the size of the chunks, if a little bland.

If only the main dishes had been of the same standard.

My karahi matar paneer was perfectly average: a little dry: the paneer wasn't the best I've tasted, the peas a little overcooked. Pleasant, but nothing special.

The daal curry was described as "Bland. After having sampled some of the other curries around the table, my daal arrived and I could scarcely detect any 'curry' taste. - Slightly slimy, not the mealy texture I like from daal. Anaemic beige colour."

The karahi tarka daal was: "... far too salty - I would have complained, but I had eaten half of it before it really hit me how salty it was. I couldn't finish this dish."

The karahi murgh lahori was perhaps the worst dish sampled that night: "The best way to describe this poor excuse of a curry is as a cold chicken soup with little taste. Very unpleasant."

The karahi chana masala wasn't liked either: a salty mush with nothing at all to recommend it. The mushroom dopiaza scored an average five, but was described as bland and unremarkable.

All in all, we thought the standard of the fare on offer at the Osmania was pretty poor. It's a new restaurant, and perhaps we caught it on a bad night - we'll be back in a few months to give it another go. On this showing, however, we cannot bring ourselves to recommend it.

(All main dishes are served with a choice of three chapattis or boiled rice.)