282 North Promenade, Blackpool (01253 622 223). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £60
Just sniffing the air in Blackpool can harden the arteries. Every day prime ingredients arrive here and, before they can even pause to gulp the bracing air, are dumped in the deep fat fryer. If it can be eaten in Blackpool, it can be breaded and fried, and vice versa. I'd say that some of its tourists look as if they have also been breaded and fried, but that would smack of snobbery and would never do. Certainly I was desperate for eating options, so I turned to Twitter. Blow me. It turns out the damn thing isn't just for posting updates about the state of your hangover. There were a few votes for Kwizeen, a Blackpool stalwart. I imagine it's pretty solid, but I knew immediately that if I reviewed it I'd spend half of my words banging on about the name and how I'd like to clip electrodes to the nipples of whoever was responsible until they begged for mercy. See, I haven't even eaten there and I'm whinging.
The other big tip (save for places like Seniors which do good fish and chips – ie, which are better at deep frying things than others) was an Indian restaurant in a Best Western Hotel on the north promenade. Really? Well, if you say so. In places like this you can't be picky. Ah, but enough with the cynicism. It turns out the Twitterati were right. Jali, in the rather unlovely Carlton hotel is not just good for Blackpool. It's good for anywhere.
It's a large space, with an elegant warren of dining spaces out back, all slate floors and columns, lattice-work screens, knobbly bits of ancient Indian carved wood and the odd flash of colour. It's probably the most understated space in Blackpool. Mind you the inside of Liberace's wardrobe would probably be understated compared to most of this town. There is a more spartan area out front with the obligatory view over the gunmetal grey seas and the lights awaiting their illumination. The menu is long, but the food is marked by an uncommon freshness and vivacity. Our party was divided over the robustness of achari fish tikka – hunks of cod marinated in a pickle-flavoured yogurt masala, then roasted in the tandoor, though with care so the flakes still fell away from each other. Yes, there was a punch of heat, but not so that you couldn't taste anything else. Tandoori roasted prawns, although that slightly worrying shade of red that speaks of the colouring cabinet, were equally assertive.
Of the mains the best was a lamb keema boti masala, the minced lamb cooked to a point where it had become just a part of the sauce, in which long-braised bits of meat bobbed and settled. What could be better for a man who likes his dinner to once have had a pulse? Funnily enough, the dark, buttery dal makhani, a hymn in praise of the lentil, which had such a powerful aroma I didn't know whether to eat it or dab it behind my ears. The lamb bhuna and the chicken lababdar had pronounced but not unwelcome sweet notes.
So, as ever with food from the Indian subcontinent, the table heaved with a collection of dun-coloured stews, but they were each distinct, toothsome dun-coloured stews. And you didn't feel, halfway through, as one can in an Indian restaurant, smart or otherwise, as though a breeze block was loitering at the bottom of your stomach, waiting for the moment to enact its revenge. Poppadoms were fresh and crisp, as you would expect of a restaurant that holds the world record for the tallest static poppadom tower. That's 282, since you asked. Service was sweet and prices, at around £5 for a starter and £9 for a main, entirely reasonable.
We finished the night in a bar where the music thumped so loud I felt my small intestine move, an experience I really can't recommend, followed by the last hour of the fabulous Funny Girls show, which I absolutely can. Surely there can be nothing that sums up a night out in Blackpool better than watching a top drag queen, dressed as Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music and miming to "Do-Re-Mi" while simulating various slippery acts with the more senior von Trapp children. It's bloody class, I tell you.
Side order: hard cheese
Celebrating the business woes of others is rarely kind, but in the case of Pizza Hut I'm prepared to make an exception. For the third year running, they've made a loss. Admittedly, at £12.12m it was a slightly smaller loss than last year (£13.31m), but red ink is red ink. Pizza Hut hasn't made money since 2006, and even then it was barely £6m – loose change for a business with more than 700 branches. Anyone who thinks the Pizza Hut product is the devil's work – bloated, grease sodden, tasteless – can only regard this as good news.
This week Jay has also been eating...
his first grouse of the season, with bread sauce, celeriac purée and duck-fat-fried game chips. He hopes to do this a lot more before the year is out.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
