We’ve been expanding our search around the Huddersfield area for new restaurants to try and last weekend we decided to head over to Destination in Slaithwaite for a Friday night out and were very glad we did.

Slaithwaite itself has quite a lot of development work going on in the town centre so the restaurant doesn’t look great from the outside as the neighbouring building is being renovated and is covered in scaffolding, but don’t let that put you off. They’ve also rather over done the incense burner when you walk in but apart from that the decor is good and it looks to have been recently modernised.

We had a very friendly welcome and good service throughout, including a visit from the chef to see if everything was to our liking and I have to say it was.

On to the food. Overall it was excellent and I have to say my Laal Maans (Laal Maas) was delicious, nicely spiced with plenty of heat but nothing ridiculous. This is a deep, rich lamb curry and I thoroughly enjoyed their version. I tried the Dhaba Murgh as well, which was also very good and a lighter chicken curry. You have a choice of spice levels when you order and they got theirs bang on, medium was just that, it had some heat but not too much and hot was hot enough but still allowed you to taste the dish.

I would give my right arm to be able to cook my pilau rice as well as they did theirs and the garlic and coriander naan was a triumph.

Generally when I eat out, if I have a slightly disappointing course, it’s the main course and not the starter but in this case it was the Kolkata Fish Fry. It was very well presented (photo on the right) but it was more “fry” than fish and didn’t really taste of much other than the fried batter. It was given a lift by the dips served alongside, but I have no idea if this is a good example of the famous Bengali street food.

My wife had the spiced scallops which although they were better, they were a little overdone so a bit chewy which is always a danger with scallop dishes. Next time we visit, and we certainly plan to, we’ll be giving some of their vegetarian starters a try as they look to have an excellent selection.

Overall, a lovely meal with very good service and definitely worth a visit if you are in the area. They don’t seem to have a website but you can check out their menu and see some more food photos on their Facebook page here.

Note: This is an independent review, we were not asked to visit and have no affiliation with Destination. We paid for our own food and drinks – £87.00 including drinks and a tip.