GOING Solo for a meal for two. That was the Examiner headline for a food review on a recently-opened, pioneering Indian restaurant.

Solo’s opened in Skelmanthorpe in 1990 – one of the first out-of-town Indians in the Huddersfield area – and the paper’s then resident gastronome was soon on the case.

Galloping gourmet, friend, former colleague, Examiner features editor and music critic Malcolm Cruise had travelled over to Skelmanthorpe, presumably with his wife Denise, to try it out.

He was suitably impressed – and said so.

A framed cutting of Malcolm’s review hangs on the wall of the takeaway area at Solo’s to this day.

So, all those years later, Carol and I followed in the footsteps of the great little man.

Why it had taken us all this time to sus out Solo’s I’m not sure as we don’t live that far away, but we were well pleased when we visited on Thursday last week.

We hadn’t booked, but we arrived early and were found a table for two in a shady nook in the spacious, traditionally Indian decorated restaurant area. The ornate light green, gold and beige dining area has a comfortable warmth, accentuated as it was with Christmas decorations. The ceiling features a large pleated swirl drape and the room is lit by an intricately cut, elaborate central Indian glass chandelier and glass shaded wall lights..

We had walked into the street-level takeaway area expecting to find the restaurant inside and Carol had to ask as to its whereabouts. We were directed around the corner, up a slight slope and round into a spacious car park. This came as another surprise as we had parked the car under the Christmas tree in the ‘Triangle’ communal village car park a way up the road and walked down.

From there it was up the steps and into the restaurant through an attractive conservatory-style reception area with easy chairs and tables.

Solo’s is not licensed for alcoholic drinks so we took our own – a bottle of red wine and a couple of bottles of non-alcoholic lager for the driver.

A personable waiter brought us the menus and then supplied appropriate glasses for our drinks and even a bottle opener for the lagers (the wine bottle was screw topped).

We ordered popadoms and the pickle tray, which quickly appeared, and perused the menu.

It’s a simple rule of thumb, but I think you can tell a lot about an Indian restaurant from its popadoms (which are spelt in a variety of different ways in varying curry houses).

The Solo’s offerings were right up there with the best – and as an added bonus it was full marks too for the pickle tray – chopped onion, spiced tomato and onion, delightfully chunky mango chutney and a yoghurt dip. There was also a delicately spiced raitha.

As we savoured the ‘pops and picks’ we compared notes over our orders: should we share a starter so as not to overface ourselves for the main dishes?

We decided to go it alone, but both of us opted for the featured fish dish – the spiced haddock.

It was served up on a large dish, with a side salad, two, sizeable pieces of moist, succulent, prime cut fillet of fish, coated with a piquant marinade – each.

The fish was most tasty, but there was such a lot of it that in order to leave room for the main course, we didn’t eat it all.

Now I hate leaving good food, but with more to come we faced a dilemma.

We should have doubled up and shared.

Now it would be churlish to criticise a restaurant for being over generous, so I can only apologise to Solo’s for our miscalculation.