Liked:
Curry Leaf Chicken (Indian McNuggets), altho chicken was overcooked a bit. But it always is, these days, courtesy of super-salmonella scares. Very rarely do we get served a properly juicy chicken except at very high end restaurants (although Daughter Thai/Oakland does a fine job with their Hat Yai dish).
Black and White Calamari. Nice combo of onion rings and squid.
Chettinadu Lamb Curry, altho we feel the better rice with it would be jasmine rather than the coconut rice we received. The latter is excellent but best shown off by a simple grilled dish; here the complex curry sauce overwhelmed it.
Kheema Uttappam (egg pancake with lamb and sweet peppers). Loved this. Wonderful combo of flavors.
So why don’t we rate Rasa higher? Although my uttappam and DH’s curry were good, as were the two starters, what we noticed afterwards was the spices used by Rasa didn’t vary much between dish to dish in what we ordered. Also, although we loved the level of chile heat, by the time we were eating the entrées I remarked to DH that everything seemed to have the exact same level of heat – no more, no less – and he agreed.
There was an aggressive sameness to the dishes, despite the fact the actual dishes were different from one another. By the time we finished eating, my palate was becoming fatigued.
In discussing this meal later, DH remarked that of the three cuisines we rate the highest – Chinese, French, and Indian – Indian seems the most difficult to translate into a “middle ground”, where fusion is trying to establish itself. It will be interesting to see how these new Indo-fusion restaurants evolve.
