On to Indian Accent for dinner. This was a special occasion dinner I booked to celebrate my husband’s 50th birthday. This is probably one of the fanciest, if not the fanciest meals I have ever had. The restaurant is a beautiful space, even though the lighting was a bit too low for my middle-aged eyes. The service was excellent. We were seated on a cozy two-seater loveseat type sofa at a table facing floor to ceiling windows looking out on the NMACC ‘Fountain of Joy’. Because of the timing of our booking, we got to see the fountain do its light show thing while we ate dinner. Cool.
The server said it wouldn’t be a problem if my husband did the tasting menu and I ordered a la carte. My a la carte order was slightly off piste, consisting of 2 starters and a side dish. I had a cocktail to start: coconut & jasmine highball (light rum, dark rum, house coconut & jasmine soda). This came with a small toast piled with coconut cream.
What I didn’t realise, is that I would end up getting a decent proportion of the tasting menu thrown in as freebies. I wasn’t really expecting that. It was all super delicious but I was really struggling with stomach space by the end. Too much of a good thing?!
We were both given mini naan filled with blue cheese and a tall thin mug of tomato rasam to start (this was part of the tasting menu). The naans looked adorable and were very tasty.
The next little trio of tastes was also served to both of us (part of the tasting menu): Multani moth kachori, channa jor garam and papdi chaat. These were bite-sized twists on Indian street snacks.
I got served my first starter when my husband was served his first larger course. I had ‘beet and peanut butter chop, kasundi cream and beet pickle’. I chose this because the description reminded me of the ‘vegetable chops’ my mother-in-law makes. Chops are a Bengali term for croquettes.
The Indian Accent version consisted of tiny spherical chops cut in half with a taste reminiscent of my mother-in-law’s classic one, heavy with beetroot and peanut. There was a cylinder of cream cheese like something piped down the middle which didn’t add anything. I can’t remember what my husband had for this course. I didn’t take a photo.
Palate cleanser: a tiny popsicle made of pomegranate shikanjvi (digestive drink) arrived in a toy pressure cooker. Cute and refreshing.
My next starter was Kanyakumari crab, XO balchao, mirchi pao. This was fantastic - sweet white crabmeat and soft pillowy spicy focaccia-like bread.
My husband had to choose the main for the tasting menu. I think I was in the ladies’ restroom when he made this choice but he didn’t realise what khandvi and kadhi were, so he chose the dry aged duck with khandvi and corn kadhi instead of the lamb shank because the shank was advertised as coming with an almond korma and he doesn’t like sweet creamy things. So for him, the sweetish Gujarati flavours were a miss. It looked beautiful though.
Now, when I ordered my side dish, which was Kashmiri morel pulao with cardamom and pine nuts, the server expressed concern that it would be too dry on its own and I said I prefer dry preparations and I really wanted to try morels as I had never had them. Suddenly, I was presented with a dish compliments of the chef, which was a stuffed morel with shaved truffle and a parmesan papad. Wow. Talk about gilding a lily. This was like pure mushroom overload.
My pulao. This was sort of the opposite - simple and letting the morel shine.
Confession: I took most of the pulao and some crab home in a doggy bag and the leftovers were terrific heated up for breakfast the next morning!
By now we were on to desserts, where I got a portion of two of the desserts on offer from the tasting menu. Tiny cones of soft serve flavoured with the Indian sweet motichoor.
Amritsari black plum, saffron mascarpone, crispy seviyan:
And my husband got a special extra dessert:
So, I had probably 30 percent of the tasting menu that I wasn’t really expecting. I would have been perfectly happy with just the few things I ordered a la carte. While it feels nice to be given freebies it also felt a bit excessive. I can’t eat a large amount and I certainly ended up having to take a significant portion of my food home. Hmmmm. Is there such a thing a service that is too attentive?
