Restaurant Review
Culinary travels in India by way of Newmarket
The sign said “beware of pickpockets”. I don’t want to sound all white and alarmist but this was not the Newmarket I remembered from such incidents as buying a $40 tube of hand cream from Aesop.
It was the kind of sign you might see at a train station. Perhaps, specifically, the station that used to be called Victoria Terminus in Mumbai, India.
Linking your restaurant with rail travel is a fraught proposition in New Zealand. In this country, train stations are synonymous with weak tea and stale ham sandwiches but read the menu notes to make sense of this new-to-newmarket eatery.
If the original V.T. connected people from all quarters, then the restaurant version is a hub for “traditional, authentic flavours from across India”. Also, you can sit in a booth under a rack stuffed with more vintage suitcases than a hipster wedding shoot. (Sure, your flatmate’s travel pics suggest the standard Indian rail commute is not so glam, but prepare to be charmed — the kitchen sounds a train whistle when your food is ready.)
We sat outside and watched other people drink cocktails. The Dancing Flamingo was the palest, prettiest strawberry rhubarb syrup pink, made grown-up with vodka. “Delicious,” said the young woman sitting at the table next to us, who had earlier offered a taste of her chilli corn.
I mention this, because her gesture appeared so spontaneous and instinctive, it made me ashamed of my own ingrained predilections. I said no because, frankly, I struggle to share plates with people I actually know — but imagine a world where our first inclination is always inclusion?
Start your Indian journey with a snack. The fig chaat appears impossible to split between two, until you follow the instructions to smoosh it with a spoon. Lifechanging. Why has no one told me to do this before? Crispy pastry flaked into creamy yoghurt, tamarind and mint chutney, fresh herbs, pomegranate seeds and, finally, soft and fruity fig ($10). Textural, floral and quite moreish, especially when you hit the minty bits.
According to the menu, the inspiration for this chaat is the “by-lanes” of New Delhi. Head southwest for the spice-battered prawns named for Mumbai’s Koliwada fishing colonies. They arrive, a startling paprika red with a pea-green coconut sauce and pink pickled onions. Eat with your eyes and then get really stuck in, because the prawns are light and juicy and there plenty of them ($15).
Hapuku was exactly the right species for the tawa fish in a meen molee ($19). The robust, spice-infused fillet (grilled, rather than fried) was plopped on top of a coconut curry that was light enough to ensure the dish’s essential fish-ness remained. You’ll want bread to mop the sauce. V.T.’S naan was smaller, lighter and less yeasty-doughy than the doorstoppers you get from the Sandringham shops.
Vegetables? Pureed and pocked with roly-poly balls of paneer ($26). The cheese was super light, the sauce was super-spinachy — it made me realise how often I’d ordered inferior (albeit cheaper) versions of this. Colour should not be the only clue to a titular ingredient. This restaurant is from the folk behind Fort St’s 1947. It feels more inclined to a cocktail crowd — plenty of small dishes and a truly gorgeous fit-out, but I still wished we’d been a party of four or 10 or any other number that might have done justice to a biriyani. We had room for one just one more dish and it was always going to be the “railway chop” ($27).
In my book, there is no more evocative meat word. “Chop” says “summer” so lush and loud I swear I can hear cicadas. These were slow-cooked then char-grilled, sticky with tamarind and served with a splodge of hung curd and fried garlic (at least that’s what the menu said — it tasted like yoghurt to me). The best chops I’ve had since our barbecue broke.
Actually, we did have room for one more dish. Daulat ki chaat was described as a “milky foam” but if you’re thinking cappuccino froth, think again. I read later this dessert was once the result of hours of hand-whisking in the pre-dawn hours of a cool, moonlit night. Today I suspect a less romantic and more technology-driven recipe. It’s kind of a dehydrated, room-temperature milkshake topped with pistachio and crunchy sugar and it dissolves to liquid on the tongue — light, and slightly mysterious.
Now we really were stuffed. Where, I wondered, were the sleeper carriages?