The Thali Restaurant has recently opened, and to our knowledge is the only curry house in Bradford which specialises in vegetarian cuisine. (Though they will cook meat dishes if you ask them.) It's an Indian restaurant, and specifically Punjabi, with a very distinctive flavour to its varied dishes.

They are offering a buffet service at the moment - a choice of various starters, half a dozen main meal curries, and a choice of naan, roti and paratha, among others, all for £6.95.

We started with samosas, allo tikki, and pakora, with salad, raita, and chat papri, a kind of cold daal in yoghurt. I thought the standard of the starters uniformly excellent - each was highly and pungently spiced without being too hot. A criticism of the starters by some of us was that they were not hot enough temperature-wise.

The choice of main meal curries was: daal, daal makhani, saag paneer, chana, aloo gobi - there were others, but we didn't try them. The best of the lot was the daal makhani - a dish which apparently takes sixteen hours to prepare. This was a thick, very creamy, dark lentil dish, subtly flavoured and mild. The plain daal was rich and spicy, with a beautiful meally taste even though it was quite fluid. The saag paneer was enjoyed - the spinach dry and hot, though the paneer pieces could have been bigger and more succulent. The chana came in a brown sauce, distinctively flavoured - almost sweet - and not enjoyed quite as much as the other dishes. The aloo gobi was a hot dry dish, nicely cooked so that the vegetables remained crunchy. A feature of all the dishes was that they were not swimming in ghee - in fact, there was no ghee in evidence either visually or to the taste. Overall, we thought the standard of the main meals very good - a welcome change in terms of flavour to the Pakistani curries we are accustomed to eating. The roti, also, were very good, freshly prepared, substantial without being too thick.

The only real downside to the experience was the atmosphere. We were the only customers in a smallish, rather cramped room. The service was fast and friendly. We finished off with an excellent selection of Indian sweets -gulab jaman, ladoo, barfi, pista burfi, cham cham - ranging from 35p to 75p each. We also had the best coffee we've sampled in a curry house for years - a bargain at 60p with free refills.

All in all, we enjoyed our meal at the Thali, and will certainly return. We'd highly recommend our readers to give the restaurant a go.

(Buffet @ £6.95)