Some like it hot

Mumbai excites discerning palates with mild, medium and fiery hot Indian fare

by MATHILDE RABBAT

If you had wandered into Mumbai on Notre-Dame W. by accident, without having laid eyes on the sign outside, you might think you had just entered a French bistro. In terms of décor, nothing in the eatery screams or even remotely harks back to the Maharashtrian capital, or to Mother India for that matter. The menu, however, tells a very different tale.

A varied card showcases a huge selection of both veggie and non-veggie specialties, with dishes running the gamut from “mild” and “medium spicy” to “spicy” and “traditional spicy,” i.e. eye-watering-smoke-out-of-your-ears spicy. What kind of critic would I, your humble servant, be if I neglected to sample offerings from each category?

A debate with my dinner companions over what should be sampled first resulted in a hung jury, some of us arguing for a crescendo from milder dishes to the hard stuff, while the other half made a case for the reverse. A sweet mango lassi ($5.99) and a couple of cheetah beers later, it was time to put our conflicting hypotheses to the test.

I started things off mildly with some papadums and a samosa, both figuring in my vegetarian combo ($16.99), one of 10 combinations, destined for either one or two diners ($16.99–$35.99). The thin, golden, papadum medallion, accompanied by an enjoyable sweet and sour dipping sauce, was as crisp as should be, and the tightly packed veggie samosa did not disappoint. Both were surprisingly light and not too oily.

My next selection, the tarka dahl, underscores the fact that dishes needn’t always be spicy hot to rouse the palate. In fact, the yellow ochre, curried lentil purée, garnished with fried onions and garlic, was one of the best dahl dishes I’ve ever savoured—one that can potentially be very filling and heavy, yet was not. Also on the mild side of things, the begun bhaji, a dry eggplant curry with tomato, deserves an honourable mention as well ($6.99).

My aloo gobi—a potato and cauliflower dish you may remember from the movie line “Why cook aloo gobi, when you can bend it like Beckham?”—was wholesome enough, with crunchy veggies and a healthy dose of turmeric, and well executed in its own right, but uneventful when compared to mains from spicier categories.

When it was time to kick it up a notch, the delicious lamb dupiaza cloaked in a thick sauce with fried onions and coriander ($13.99), from the moderately spicy category, mediated nicely between the harmless curry mixtures of dishes sampled thus far and those still to come, like the Colombo curry ($12.99–$15.99) one of the fieriest selections on the menu. Up till the point this chicken, coconut, ginger and hot green chilly dish hit the table, I had found no use for the cooling effect of the yogurt-based cucumber raita ($2.99), de rigueur when you take Colombo on.

The verdict is in: hot-till-you-drop mains are best enjoyed only after you’ve sampled the milder and moderately hot stuff. Palao rice, which accompanies some combos, and a deliciously potent garlic naan ($3.99) make for adequate tools to slop up any and all curry sauces.

Though it would have been, shall we say, appropriate to follow all previous courses up with a gulab jamun or some kulfi (both $3.99), the dessert from my veggie combo presented me with a case of which-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other? I capped off my meal with a crème brûlée, as it were, which provided an abrupt break with what had come before.

The fact of the matter is, I thoroughly savoured this little burnt custard number, infused with orange essence and served with physalis for dramatic effect.

Sure, this kind of quality comes at a price, and there are other Indian eateries where you’ll get more bang for your buck. But, if you’re in the market for something more refined, then Mumbai is the place for you.