Herald rating: * * * 1/2
Address:137A Richmond Rd, Grey Lynn
Phone: 09 378 4500
www.m137a.co.nz (under construction)
Open: 5pm, 7 days
Cuisine: Indian
From the menu: Charcoal-grilled cardamom chicken $12; Charcoal-roasted lamb cutlets, mint, chilli, rocket $18.50; Bananas in cinnamon and brown sugar, vanilla cake $12
Vegetarian: Indian in Grey Lynn. Go figure
Wine (and beer) list: Way above average
Knocked up some shelves in the kitchen over the holidays. To hold the cookbooks. Old story: when I went to check out the dishes at this palace we'd eaten this week, the book I wanted wasn't there.
This palace is M, a new establishment in the former Salsa site in Grey Lynn, run by some people who have - as they say in the sports pages - got form. Naresh and Gita Solanki created the wonderful, never-to-be-forgotten Masala. Well, that's forgotten now. It's the Zambesi shop on P. Rd. And Bolliwood. Which went downhill after they left. It would. It was bought by people from Wellington.
The book I was looking for came up when I researched M's speciality, "Indian tapas". It was called the Bhagavad-Gita and it reckoned that tapas means "to shine, blaze or converge inner heat". Physically, as when Jude is really into her yoga class on Sunday morning. Intellectually, as when I apply deep concentration and thought to a divine ideal on Sunday morning. Usually, Wayne Rooney in the opposition's six-yard box.
Somehow I don't think Google and I were talking about the same thing. Don't blame the G-site: tapas is an overused and abused term these days. It used to mean gutsy Sevillian nibbles; now it's anything smaller than an entree, designed to cost bugger-all to cook and satisfy the licensing laws requiring food to be served with ... "Yeah, we'll all have another mojito". Vietnamese spring roll. Szechuan money-bag. Mini-burgers. Croatian, Polish, Inuit, Fijian. Some chef will discover his late grandmother's handwritten notebook of Cornish tapas favourites soon.
Mind you, tapas is not the only food term that needs defining here. And elsewhere. M declares itself a bar and cafe. I think that means a place where the neighbourhood drops in, has a wine or a platter, chats to the folks at the same or the next table, saunters off home.
Well, says Jude, that's a local restaurant, and this is a local restaurant, serving Indian food, and it should be judged against similar places in Mt Albert or New Lynn or Birkenhead. She has a point, though it took me two beers to see it.
Which reminds me. We should start with the beers, because we did. M has some interesting Kiwi options on the list. I chose Dux's Ginger Tom; I'd not seen it before. The bloke at my day job who knows about beer says that this Christchurch micro-place makes some nice brews...
Not this one. It has a cat on the label. I think this is because that is a portrait of the producer of this beer. Sorry. I hesitate to use the term "beer" for Ginger Tom: it is a cat's P, and I do not mean Pilsener.
I liked the food here. I liked the food because, so often, four or six of you go to an Indian restaurant and there's so much on the menu, it might as well be the Mumbai phone book, you settle for two or three dishes that most people like. You didn't really want the tikka masala or the butter chicken but you don't want to rock the bhaji and you end up asking the nice, helpful guy to put it into a dinky little plastic container to take home so you can eat it for lunch at work tomorrow and three weeks later you throw it out. These are smaller servings, so you don't have that problem. And you can try several different platters. I thought the ingredients fresh and very well cooked.
Jude was a tad less enthused. "C'mon," she said, "that's a chicken kebab, you can do it on the barbecue any night of the week." She was similarly disposed towards the chicken korma (see Mt Albert/New Lynn reference above) but was impressed with the eggplant curry and kachori, purses of dough and spices and vegetables. We both went ga-ga over pistachio-crusted icecream.
So we debated in the car, and converged without inner heat. I would give M 4 stars and Jude would give it 3. Because we are mature adults who can discuss and respect our differences of opinion, she will continue to go to yoga on Sunday mornings and I will continue to watch Manchester United. And we will give M 3 stars.
