I was alerted to the existence of this restaurant by @Nangbaorou recently. I looked it up online and two things stood out: the menu appeared to be Malayali Syrian Christian from Kerala, and the Google reviews were not great. I decided to ask some Syrian Christian nurses who work in my department if they had been there. The word from them was - it’s a good restaurant but serves a lot of dishes specific to or specifically enjoyed by their community, so the suboptimal Google reviews might be from a British customer expecting the usual ‘curry house’ fare. They felt the prices were more reasonable compared to another local restaurant run by Malayalis. They WhatsApped me the names of dishes they particularly enjoy from this restaurant. Armed with this knowledge, I placed a delivery order this evening:
You can order online through the restaurant’s own website and they charge £2.99 for delivery. You can choose a delivery slot. My house is located in a slightly out of the way road so I tried calling them to explain how to locate my house - nobody answered the phone despite multiple calls. Hmmmmm. The delivery slot time passed and I was getting a bit worried and thinking of those Google reviews. But around 15 mins past the allotted time, a small car appeared in our driveway and a man dropped off our order.
Overall, I would say we enjoyed the items and would order again from here.
The positives:
Everything was tasty. The sauces had clearly been made from scratch and they were all unique. The kingfish curry sauce was slightly sour and not too rich. The beef pazham podi had a complex dryish sauce, almost like a rendang, and two super ripe plantains braised in the sauce with tender pieces of beef. The chicken Mandi was quite different (my understanding is this is a Yemeni dish which is popular amongst Malayalis), not spicy and quite subtle in its flavour, but with each grain of rice separate and the chicken very tender (quarter of a chicken presented wrapped in foil).
The not-so-positives:
The actual protein components of each dish were not abundant. The king fish was 3 small pieces, and same for the beef and chicken. The kizhi porotta was new to us - a stack of flaky porotta that had had a chicken curry (very tasty) poured into the centre, then the stack is placed on a banana leaf, which is placed on a large piece of foil. The whole thing is gathered up into a big bundle with a topknot of twisted foil. I suppose the idea is that the porotta becomes saturated with the chicken curry gravy and steamed in the bundle. The resulting dish is almost like an Indian chicken pasta, with soft strips of paratha soaked in chicken curry pulling away and some small pieces of chicken on the bone here and there. We didn’t dislike it, but weren’t completely in love with it. I guess you need to grow up with this dish to be a true fan.
We have saved the gravies from the curries - will stretch them by adding our own fish and chicken later!
Overall, definitely worth a try.
. But Indian food never had to look nice to taste great. Will be better organised next time!
