The door to the dining room flew open and a smiling waiter greeted me like a long-lost brother. This was hardly surprising. He had only sent me up the road a few minutes ago to find some cash to pay the bill.
Perhaps he was relieved I had come back, even although I had taken the precaution of leaving my wife as a deposit.
You see, all was not ship-shape at the Shapla. It was open for six weeks, but it seemed more dress-rehearsal time was required and the card machine to pay the bill had broken down to top it all.
The restaurant occupies a prime spot above shops and gazes out over Union Street. Word had travelled fast that good Indian cuisine was coming out of this kitchen and the place was full on what was a filthy Saturday night. The wind was howling, sheets of rain were sliding in horizontally and, if I closed my eyes, I might have imagined hanging from the ropes of a boat off the Broch in a force-niner.
This made me think of fish. I had the overwhelming urge to try a fish curry.
The general hubbub created a buzzing atmosphere. There was a mixture of groups and couples. They almost felt like old friends by the time we left because we sat there for two and a half hours. As you might suspect, there was a problem with the service. Just two waiters for the numbers who turned up was never going to work and it became progressively slower. I felt sorry for the pair who battled so manfully, but it was like the Siege of Mafeking at times or, shall we say, the Siege of Shapla.
A man whom I took to be the chef kept peering nervously from the doorway of his kitchen with a look of disbelief on his face, as he surveyed the hordes of diners.
The Shapla has nice surroundings and an expansive menu, ranging wide and far. We settled on onion bhajee, chicken tikka and fish pakora, using haddock, to start with. While we were waiting poppadums arrived with a good variety of pickles.
Our starters were delicious and well presented: fluffy onion bhajees, succulent chunks of marinated chicken and lightly battered pakoras with a generous filling of tasty haddock – fish fingers, Indian style.
Despite the other issues, the quality of the food was high, which is what really mattered.
I kept looking at my watch and, by using my extraordinary skills with advanced applied mathematics I figured out, by counting how many diners were ahead of us and how many minutes were left on my parking meter, if Shapla was going to meet the challenge of delivering our main courses in the time remaining.
With 12 minutes to go, the mathematical solution to this tricky equation came to me and it didn’t need Higgs Bosun to tell me that there was not a cat in hell’s chance.
So I sprinted up to Golden Square to pay Aberdeen City Council’s stealth tax on people trying to enjoy a night out, while supporting local businesses (which, in turn, pay their business rates to the council), and resembled a drowned rat on my return (this was my first exit from Shapla not my second, if you remember). My spectacles had steamed up, but my wife gave me the good news that my main course was on the table, even although I couldn’t actually see it.
We had really pushed the boat out: a curried lamb shank for my wife and a grilled salmon and king-prawn curry for me.
The lamb was superb: thick with tender, juicy meat, accompanied by chick peas, a tasty curry sauce and fluffy rice. A chapati bread completed the picture. Perfect.
I was miffed, of course. I was morphing into Victor Meldrew. Something wasn’t right with my fish curry. It had all been a bit odd at the start during the order process because, as although the menu listed delights such as monkfish and sea bass in the fish-curry section, I was told only salmon was available. So, I asked them to throw in prawns as well.
It was not what I expected: generous chunks of salmon and prawns adorned the plate, but there was a fussy and unnecessary ring of salad around it. A serving dish filled with a pretty ordinary curry sauce was alongside. I had expected a glorious curry concoction on my plate. It was not what I expected, however the fish was delicious.
OK, there were teething troubles, but I do feel the Shapla has something special going for it – and the food was delicious.
The friendly pair of waiters were incredibly apologetic as we bade farewell. It was that kind of relief you might feel after narrowly avoiding a car crash but, thankfully, it all turned out well in the end. The Shapla boys had pulled it off.