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This old school curry house is decorated in the style of the mid-1970s, presumably the date of its first arrival in Chester. This was a time when the curry house became an intrinsic part of most young people's lifestyle. A first introduction to the pleasures of eating out, with its stilted rituals and the banal intercourse of table service, it was probably the beginning of mass restauration as we know it.
That the Gate of India has clung, so tenaciously, to this familiar paradigm is at once endearing and worrying, touching and yet perverse. We look back and wonder what it was that first attracted us to them. Maybe it was the booths, with their cosy privacy and the ephemeral thrill of knowing that you had a less than 50:50 chance of getting one. Or perhaps it was the grub: a vindaloo for the boys and a korma for the girls? Chicken tikka massalla hadn't even been discovered. Whatever it was, it was a success then and at the Gate they have made sure that the formula has stood the test of time.
The menu holds no surprises, unless it is that there really are no surprises. One looks for innovation, regional cuisine, new wave stuff in vain. Thirty-odd years of the same old, same old. You'd think this at least would lend a time-served perfectionism to the cooking, but no, it is only average. No better than you would expect, to be sure. The only interesting thing about it is that the samosas come in supersize format: they shatter under the fork spilling agreeably meaty content amongst the lettuce leaves and tomato. One is a meal. If a curry house can have a signature dish, this is theirs.
It doesn't really matter. The Gate's customers are fiercely loyal and have been coming for decades. Where once they ate with their mates after the pub and talked of footie and cars, now they come at seven with their grown up families and the conversation is of pensions and prices. The waiters know the customers' names. They trade banter, tease and listen. With such support nobody's going to give a damn about some poncy geek moaning about the food, but I've done it for you anyway.
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