I have more time now so a more complete post, also going to borrow a couple of rshome's pics. Unlike the others I live quite close to ASM so I do shop there, it is my favourite supplier, not only because of the levels and variety of stock, but also the good staff and the fact that it is, unlike a few I could name, very clean, it's a proper Indian grocers and cash & carry (open to the public) Can't recommend the place enough, now onto the curry report/review of Indian Ocean.
Environment was nice, comfortable, well decorated and clean, staff were reasonably attentive and not anything I would really criticise. As a starter i saw they did a chicken and prawn puri, which, being different to the usual (that i like a LOT) prawn puri I gave it a go. That was my first disappointment, the amount of topping was a litle sparse and the dish was rather dry, I recon i could have picked up the puri by an edge and let the topping come off and still have a pretty dry puri, it was decorated with a sprig of fresh coriander and not even the obligatory lemon wedge that usually comes with that dish. rshome took a pic of it i believe so you can see for yourself, verdict, not impressed.
It seems the {img} tag is crippled on this site but the pic is here :-
Main meal I chose a tandoori mixed grill, with a madras sauce and pilau rice, a peshwari nan and a plain nan.
The meat itself consisted of a tandoori chicken leg, a tandoori lamb chop, 2 pieces of garlic chicken and a seekh kebab, all was fine with that except the seekh, it was most certainly underdone and so were the onions in the dish, in fact I do believe the waiter noticed it and covered it with the onions when serving it, not wanting to be regarded as picky, judge for yourself in this pic :-
Onto the madras sauce, everyone had a taste and agreed with me that it was underdone, the heat (spice heat not hot/cold heat) was too harsh, just as if someone had put chilli powder into some base and just heated and stirred through, it's what I refer to as a 'too young' sauce in that the spices added to base haven't been 'cooked in' enough, so sauce was a disappointment, plain nan was fine but the peshwari wasn't the best and had a bit more of the fall apart syndrome than others I've had. Rice was ok but then again not a lot to break with rice.
So, overall verdict, decent company but the food didn't do it for me. However the trip into the kitchens made it worthwhile too and in that respect they were very accomodating, as Alchy has said, the base definitely had a dominance of carrot so more than the usual 1 or a 1/2 carrot in their base and definitely some chillies in there, which to be honest, i do add chillies to my base too.
EDIT
Forgot to mention, I though it was overpriced too.
