I went with my parents and a family friend visiting from McLaren Vale, South Australia. We ate early as that was the preference of the company I had.
The service was very good, just the right amount of friendly. Very professional. The waiter repeated our order back to us to ensure all was correct and was knowledgeable about both the food and wine lists.
There were some attempts at upselling naan bread and sparkling mineral water. Nicely done, but declined in favour of filling up on the other dishes and drinking wine and the delicious Hanuman iced tea mocktail (they make the syrup, mainly lemon grass and ginger, in-house and top it with soda).
I started with the oysters, I really wanted our friend to experience them. For those who haven't tried them yet, they come served on an oven-hot clay dish with depressions in it that hold 1 oyster each. The oysters are lightly poached in the sauce that fills the depression with them. The sauce is a wonderful blend of chilli, lemon grass, ginger and thai basil - aromatic, not too spicy and above all, doesn't mask the flavour of the small, tasty oysters in it. No wonder it is their signature dish!
For the mains we had the pork belly Chinese style, thick and tender slices in a star anise sauce with asian greens.
We also had an old favourite, the butter chicken. You know they have a proper tandoor oven out there in the kitchen as the chicken has been marinated in tandoori spices, cooked on a skewer in the tandoor oven and then put in the smooth tomato, cream and cashew sauce.
The third main we shared was the red curry duck. The sauce was fabulous, but the duck was a little chewy.
FOOD: 8/10
very very good
SERVICE: 8/10
very very good
AMBIENCE: 7/10
the lighting's nice but the acoustics aren't so good - when it's busy it's LOUD. It can also be a little on the chilly side when dining inside.
I love that you don't get matching plates, they are all beautiful and all different. I also like the distinctive cutlery.
WINE LIST: 7/10
a good range, including some older vintages and more expensive wines; and a bit of each variety by the glass.
2 comments:
I had the iced tea mocktail as well - though the waitress warned us it might need a bit of a stirring... I stirred a bit, took a sip, and holy crap biggest sip of ginger flavour - very strong.... thankfull it settled down after a lot more stirring!
Food was great though! :)
I really enjoyed the mocktails too, stong and fine. The oysters are worth the whole experience.
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