Forget Brick Lane. Forget what you thought you knew about Bangladeshi cuisine. There’s a new kid in town and she’s putting the heart back into your weekly curry night.

Shanaz Khan, 29, is a British Bangladeshi, hailing from Manchester. She now lives just off Brick Lane and recently opened her first restaurant, Chaat , on Redchurch Street.
Chaat has a clean but welcoming canteen style and Shanaz serves home cooked Bangladeshi cuisine, ‘just like ‘amma' used to make’. The place is a regular venue for First Thursdays, which means the walls are adorned with top-notch art that changes monthly.

The menu is simple but effective and guides you through the Bangladeshi experience. Perfect for those who are less familiar with the cuisine. I tried the lunchtime special. At £4.95 it offered basmati rice with tharka dhaal and a choice of mains. I went for the thenga, which is fish pieces in mango and tomato sauce.

For me this provided the perfect lunch. It came beautifully presented: the yellow dhaal and the red-brown thenga sitting prettily on top of the light basmati rice. My only possible complaint would be that while the portion size was perfect for me I suspect most blokes could have eaten the serving twice over.

All Shanaz’s food is home cooked and this really shows, not least because it’s not swimming in oil. The flavour of the dhaal was just right and the consistency much more pleasing then the typical over-blended version that the larger restaurants pump out. The thenga sauce was a rich and satisfying gravy and though I would have liked to taste a little bit more mango flavour the fish was flaky and beautiful.

The meal was washed down with Tropical Green Tea – a light and fruity blend that revived and refreshed as only green tea can whilst the tropical scent made me wistful for travels abroad.

I’ve always found the Brick Lane experience too heavy and oily but eating at Chaat gave me a new perspective on Bangladeshi cuisine. I’ll definitely be coming back to sample more of Shanaz’s home cooked genius.

Chaat
36 Redchurch Street, E2