Saleems Restaurant

I’m writing this review with sadness as this brilliant restaurant is to close soon, after trading for 40 odd years. I always bought my katlama’s and tandoori chicken from Saleem’s because of the freshness and the taste. I have had a brilliant dining experience here loads of times and would say the curries, tandoori fish, tandoori chicken and even the sweets are tasty and fresh. Sad to hear it’s closing and one of the best restaurants in Birmingham will soon disappear from Ladypool Road. Shame…

Einfache und sehr gute Küche. Für 23£ sind wir zu zweit satt und glücklich geworden. Selbst das normale Naan-​Brot ist ausreichend groß für zwei Personen. Eine Portion Lassi ist ein ganzer Krug.
Empfehlenswert sind natürlich die Baltis. Zumindest auf die Samosas würde ich beim nächsten mal verzichten — zum einen, weil die leider nur in der Mikrowelle erwärmt wurden (wie so oft) und zum anderen, weil es schlichtweg zu viel war…
Da die meisten Balti-​Restaurants keine Schanklizenz haben, kann man sich seine eigenen alkoholischen Getränke mitbringen.
Für diese Preiskategorie unschlagbar. Nicht vom Ambietente abschrecken lassen.

So, apparently, Saleem’s has been around for over 40 years. That’s pretty impressive. So I was expecting a local legendary experience, which I didn’t quite get, to be honest.
The food was good, but not amazing. It tasted pretty much like most other baltis I’ve had. That said, the standard is pretty high in this neck of the woods — so that’s actually a more positive comment than it sounds. The service was pleasant — not hugely friendly but not rude — just somewhere in between.
The atmosphere was a bit lacking — the emphasis here is really on the food rather than on havng a night out. So it’s just as well that the food is good really. Other people seem to love this place, and perhaps I was just expecting too much as it’s a bit of a local institution. I would go again, the food was tasty, after all. I guess I was just expecting it to blow me away.

Saleems is an old school balti café, I remember my mom raving about this new type of restaurant she had found hundreds of years ago where you eat the food with bread rather than a knife and fork! fortunately it still has all of its charm.
Nestled in the heart of the Balti Triangle on the Ladypool road, it is more the kind of place you go to just get your eat on rather than a place to have a full dining experience. It’s a no frills balti café but the food is cheap and good and with over 40 years as a fixture you know you are getting a nice piece of balti history as you scoff your grub!

I chose Saleem’s as the place to give away my ‘balti virginity’. According to friends it ticked all the right boxes. It was good value for money, and you could take your own booze in. It was in the ‘Balti Triangle’. And most importantly it had the authentic nature of having the menus set under the glass of the table. When I went here I had chicken on the bone balti. There’s something different about the taste of meat when it’s cooked on the bone. But hey, this was 20 years ago…
Fast forward to now. It still has the menus under the glass (!) and it still has a café kind of atmosphere. It is an eatery, a place to get food and then get on to something else rather than the main attraction of a night out. Hence, it would be hard to sell Saleems to punters for a romantic night out or anything along those lines. Saleems is what Saleems is. With a basic menu of good eats for around £5.50 I’d recommended it as relaxed place that’s a change from a formal balti dining experience.

Saleems is always busy. A good indication of the quality is that there are often Asian families eating there. I find that they use too much ghee, and so the food comes out rather greasy. They have given in to the temptation of offering a very westernised frozen desert menu, which is sad. They used to do gulab jalam, barfi and so on. (please correct my spelling if I’ve got it wrong)