Here’s a serving suggestion: first, round up three chums with a taste for Indian food. Second, head off to your preferred liquor emporium and stock up on the necessary beer or wine to help you enjoy said cuisine. Third, head off for Dev’s on the Gloucester Road (where the Curry Hut used to be) and order the South Indian set meal for four. The waiter will obligingly provide you with a bottle opener and glasses and after a short wait (because they obviously cook things freshly) a veritable feast will begin to arrive at your table in five courses. First up vadai, spicy lentil flour doughnuts straight from the frier with a good earthy sambar (vegetable stew), quickly followed by fat mutton rolls full of juicy shredded meat redolent with fenugreek and chilli and accompanied by a tart tomato sauce. Pause for a moment, if you can, before the arrival of the masala dosa, smooth and crisp rolled pancakes stuffed with savoury potato and happy to be united with the leftover sambar as well as a treacly tamarind gravy. Once they’re despatched, the papadoms arrive, with a good selection of apparently homemade chutney, and then, finally, a spread of curries is produced. Two meat, one fish and one vegetable, with parathas and rice. But make sure you’ve got some of that booze left by the end because there’s a big shock coming with the bill. This feast will cost you £36. That’s not for each, that’s for all. Less than a tenner a head and BYO for booze makes it an economical night out but the amazing (and important) thing is that it doesn’t feel remotely cheap. The place is nicely done out with plain but stylish wooden furniture and candles and flowers on the tables, the service is friendly and obliging and, most important of all, the generous food is all well made, properly cooked and nicely presented. There’s a full menu to pick from, of course, with lots of great South Indian vegetarian choices as well as the more usual curry house selections. Picking your own Keralan feast would probably come to a tad over a tenner but not a whole lot more, and if it’s all as well cooked as the meal we had, it will be memorably enjoyable. (Tony Benjamin)

DEV’S KERALA 180 GLOUCESTER RD, BISHOPSTON, BRISTOL, BS7 8NU. TEL: 0117 924 5555 OR WWW.DEVSKERALA.CO.UK

VENUE VERDICT

A PROPER TASTE OF SOUTH INDIA AND A BARGAIN TO BOOT.

Copyright Tony Benjamin 2010