Superb sauces and splendid spicing keep the palate guessing
Mark Laba
Province
Jaspal Saini shows off Tandoori Chicken and Nan bread, Café Mumbai-style. Photograph by : Jon Murray, The Province
Café Mumbai
Where: 2893 W. Broadway, Vancouver
Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-737-2500
Drinks: Fully licensed
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. every day
You can take the curry out of Surrey but you can’t take the Surrey out of the curry. As home to one of Vancouver‘s largest Indo-Canadian communities, it is no mystery that if it’s Indian food you crave, this is the suburban city to hit.
So when one of my favourite restaurants made the pilgrimage from the Scott Road strip of East Indian eateries to the increasingly well-heeled heart of Kitsilano (and some of those heels are stilettos, to boot, as the daughters of baby boomers discover Sex and the City values), I was hoping to find the recipes and the cooking unchanged.
It turns out that the owners of Mahek, the Surrey restaurant in question, actually sold their original place and hence the name change in Kits to Café Mumbai. Brothers Jaspal and Amarjeet Saini had great success with their original venture and I was hoping this new establishment would follow suit.
Peaches and I stepped into a spiffy room of subdued hues, turmeric-tinged walls softened by dimmed lighting and highlighted in spots by splashes of reflecting brass knickknacks, pale wood furnishings offset by darker gold tones and an unusual silvery metal backdrop, like the panel off a spaceship, behind the dark wood bar.
Menu-wise, there are a few new entries to the lineup, but it was the old standbys that Peaches and I sought out first. The butter chicken ($12.95) here has a sauce so texturally luxurious I’d offer it in a spa as a rejuvenating bath. On the tastebud level, this is a spicier butter chicken than most I’ve slobbered over, which is fine by me, because I think all poultry needs a bit of a kick in the pants if it’s going to make it out of the coop and onto a plate.
We also sampled the lamb vindaloo ($12.95), the sauce the deep dark red of a Goan sunset and just about as fiery. Intricate spicing, but I found some of the lamb to be a bit fatty. The palak paneer was a savoury mire of spinach, cubes of homemade cottage cheese rising from the pond of greenery and the aloo gobi (both $10.95) was a well-built cauliflower and potato creation, cooked tender to the tooth but not mushy.
I also like the samosas here with their plump bullfrog-like bodies, great with the tamarind dipping sauce. Some new menu items to take a poke at all revolve around poultry and I recommend the mint or the coconut chicken curry. Otherwise you’re looking at all the typical fare on an East Indian menu but here the sauces are cooked with care, the spicing is complex enough to keep the palate guessing and the heat level is not enough to make you whimper but will make your peepers water. Which, if your vision is going to be blurry, better here in a chair than crossing the Pattullo Bridge in the suicide lane.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
Exotic without being quixotic.
RATINGS: Food: B+ Service: B+ Atmosphere: B
© The Vancouver Province 2008
