From the ridiculous to the sublime...

Last week we visited curry Hell - in the form of a trip to the Shalamar on Manchester Road. This week, Heaven. We'd visited the Ujala around eight months ago, and then we wrote: "All in all, the Ujala has the makings of a very good up-market curry house - though circumstance on the night conspired to make the sampling conditions far from optimum."

Since then it has absorbed the Sabraj - the portacabin curry house shut down last year - in that it now has the Sabraj's old menu (literally: the menus are the plastic laminated triptych affairs, bearing the address of the Sabraj) and also has the chef from that restaurant.

We started with onion bhaji (£1.65), gobi pakora (£1.65), and sabzi pakora (£1.65). They were above average, though not as good as we recalled from our first visit. The onion bhaji consisted of two small, thin burger-style affairs, medium spiced, and rather expensive. The gobi pakora was distinctive - so deep fried that we mistook the cauliflower for potato. The sabzi was the best of the bunch, nicely crisp and spiced.

The main courses were far better.

My tarka dahl, while on the mild side, was superb: the large toor lentils were cooked to perfection - mealy, and retaining their flavour - and the portion was very generous. It was one of the better dahls I've tasted for a long while. The mixed vegetable curry was well liked: "a great selection of fresh (not tinned) veg in a rich, creamy, medium-spiced sauce. And the chapattis were the best I've ever sampled." The aloo brinjal also scored well: plentiful aubergines and nicely diced potatoes in a rather mild if pleasant sauce. We were delighted with the portions: too often we finish our meals still feeling hungry, but not here.

The service was very good, and the staff attentive and pleasant. We finished with excellent coffee at unbeatable value: £1.00 a cup, which we had refilled.

All in all, a fine curry experience: if you haven't yet sampled the delights on offer at the Ujala, you're missing a treat.

(Sundries do not come with the main meals, and must be ordered extra: chapattis 35p, garlic nan £1.65, boiled rice £1.30).

The Ujala is a relatively new restaurant - opened just six months - tucked away along the dead-end Manville Terrace (on the same street as the upstairs section of the International curry house). The décor is up-market and comfortable, the service friendly: the menu warns that, as all meals are freshly prepared, a slight delay is to be expected.

There was a slight delay between courses, but not unduly bothersome. The starters were a treat. The onion bhaji (£1.65) were of the flat-cake variety, uniquely spiced in our experience, and delicious. The samosas (£1.65) were small (two per portion) and freshly cooked - what seemed like filo pastry enclosing mildly-spiced fresh vegetables. The gobi pakora (£1.65) was a slight disappointment: though the very red batter was incredibly tasty and more-ish, there was actually little cauliflower in the starter. We were given a free pickle tray consisting of a hot lime pickle, a mild mango chutney and a mixed salad with a nice dressing. All in all, an excellent beginning.

I ordered aloo brenjal as my main dish, and through some confusion that was partly my fault, it didn't arrive. When it did, made in a rush to allow me to catch my bus, the haste of preparation showed. It was weak, thin, and rather insipid - not at all like the other dishes. The tarka dahl was very good, big, perfectly-cooked chana lentils in a mild spice preparation, and dry - unlike the rather soup-like consistency of some tarka dahls. The balti murgh contained large chunks of chicken, but the sauce was merely average in terms of taste and lacked depth and distinction. The murgh dopiaza, though again containing plenty of chicken, was too sharp and astringent for a dopiaza, and failed to satisfy. The chana masala was well above average, the sauce distinctive and the chick peas nicely prepared. The saag aloo (again prepared hastily due to confusion) was thin and insipid - hopefully not representative of this dish made in optimum conditions.

All in all, the Ujala has the makings of a very good up-market curry house - though circumstance on the night conspired to make the sampling conditions far from optimum. Well worth a visit for the starters alone, though.

(The price of the main meals does not include chapattis, etc: Chapattis: 35p, plain naan: £1.00, Garlic naan: £1.65, boiled rice: £1.30.)