Delhi Restaurant, 60 Race Course Road

Little India is filled with a dizzying array of restaurants serving regional food of obviously Indian origins. Most of them look pretty similar a first glance and given the opportunity, I'll probably be hard pressed for choice. Edwin and Janrie by chance of some friends came across Delhi Restaurant (5 minutes stroll from Little India MRT) which they've eaten at on a couple of occasions (at least!) and they convinced me that it was really good. I do trust my friends more than I do commercial site reviews so that's pretty much how I ended up there.

This place claimed to serve authentic North Indian food. I think it's fair to that claim the benefit of a doubt since there is a sizeable Indian community locally. Most Indian food places are I suppose as good as it gets. At least for the most of us it is.

The lighting of the restaurant was dim. Slightly. The servers brought a glass of cool water before presenting their menu stating that it's probably warm for us to be walking all the way down to their restaurant and they felt that serving water first instead of shoving the menu would be a more sensible and hospitable. I don't disagree. From this point, it felt a little pushy as we were prompted to order while we were browsing the menu.

Fast forward, we picked prawn masala, chicken masala, some palek paneer, garlic naan and a plate of basmati rice. After taking orders, we were presented with a basket of papadams. If you don't know what they are, just look to the left. They're Indian spiced crackers which are commonly served before or alongside meals. These here tasted freshly fried and were crispy. It was accompanied with mint yoghurt (appetisingly delicious). There were free refills after we emptied the first basket.

As mentioned earlier, I've had local Indian food for years. Here I was wondering to myself why was it that I have seldom visited their restaurants. When the food arrived, I remembered why. The practice of garnishing their dishes with that vile herb coriander. That's a major gripe I have with Indian cuisine. Coriander - I can't express my distaste for that evil weed enough. It's the wet blanket of all the delicious meals that I've had, including this one. If it's one plant I'll eradicate from the face of this planet, coriander will have go. But enough of my diatribe against herbs. The food here was good. This place was definitely worth the visit despite being a little out of the way.

There were a couple of the dishes I wanted to take note of. One's the palek paneer (cottage cheese in spinach puree thing) which was something I've not had before and found quite good. It's cottage cheese cubes (tasted like a not salty feta) drowned in spinach puree drizzled with yoghurt. Also the garlic naan was pretty damn nice. There was real garlic instead of freeze dried bits. If you see the full sized picture, I think you just might be able to make out the irregularly shaped small chunks of the chopped up garlic on the naan.

"You see señor, the bull does not always lose..."

Desserts from Indian restaurants aren't usually my thing. It's usually far too sweet for my taste. Not to mention. Those small looking servings are also deceptively very filling. I think Janrie got intrigued by some description in the menu and ordered a portion of.....well, I can't remember what it's called. How it taste essentially is like wet doughnut balls. Fried round balls of flour which was soaked in a very sweet syrup. And it's really sweet. I ordered a glass of lassi which had the option of either sweet or salted version. I picked the sweet. Innocuous looking and popular yoghurt drink it seems among Indians. This one tastes like a cheesy yoghurt smoothie which I liked.