Auckland Restaurant Review: New Indian Restaurant Rahi Serves A Fantastic Feast

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By Jesse Mulligan

Tuesday Jul. 30, 2024

Viva

The palak burrata on the menu at new Ponsonby restaurant Rahi. Photo / Babiche Martens

RAHI

Cuisine: Indian

Address: 14 Ponsonby Rd, Ponsonby

Phone: (09) 558 4994

Reservations: Accepted

Drinks: Fully licensed

From the menu: Eggplant pakoda $14; papdi chaat $13; dahi kebab $18; Patiala chicken curry $28; palak burrata $30; dal bukhara $18; laccha paratha bread $5

Rating: 16/20

Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12

“You’re lucky,” my friend Jeremy said to me recently. “You get to invite men out to dinner with you, and it’s not weird.”

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He was talking about hard it is for a man of middle age to expand his friend group. You’re basically limited to the guys you know from school and the husbands of your wife’s friends who you’re just sort of stuck with. From time to time you meet a bloke and think “we’d be good mates, him and me”, but while attitudes to same-sex romantic relationships have progressed, it’s still considered odd for one straight man to ask another if he’d like to take things to the next level.

But that’s not so for your weekly restaurant reviewer, who is called upon by his job to invite new and interesting men out to dinner. And so it was that I found myself at a table with journalist Gaurav Sharma and grief podcaster Timothy Giles to try out Ponsonby’s newest Indian restaurant.

The brick-walled dining room at Rahi. Photo / Babiche Martens

Rahi replaces Mr Spicer at the south end of the strip. What makes the new owners think they will do any better? Well, they have a great pedigree, having been involved in the early days of the wonderful 1947 in the city and Newmarket’s VT Station. Both these places occupy a welcome middle ground — flasher than a suburban curry house without approaching fine-dining fussiness or price.

Rahi has been launched with the help of artisan cocktail maker Sahil Patel, who takes his job very seriously and we loved his creative inventions — even if the sound of a bartender continually shaking ice did make it difficult to keep up with Gaurav’s analysis of the recent Indian elections. The wine options are sadly not up to much and while I try not to directly offer restaurateurs advice, Timothy, who is both a wine consultant and a funeral celebrant, felt obliged to take the guy aside at one point and encourage him to bury the list.

The food is fantastic. One of the founders told me his goal was to create food in Auckland as good as that found in the fine hotels of India and the dishes they serve here are a noticeable step up from anything you will find elsewhere in our city. You can choose the kitchen’s tasting menu and receive a generous selection of dishes but one of us was vegetarian so we took a mix of “chef’s choices” and a few extra plant-based treats.

The house chaat. Photo / Babiche Martens

“Are you enjoying it?” I asked Gaurav as he munched seriously through a chaat — a decadent crispy disc topped with yoghurt, tamarind, pomegranate seeds, fried chickpea flour sprinkles and heady spices.

“Yes”, he said.

I said, “Tell your face.”

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I was prepared for the eggplant slices, having been warned they were “just like fish and chips”, but if there’s a fish and chip shop in Auckland that does thinly sliced aubergine I’d like to hear about it. The batter is light but indulgent and the dish comes with a side of mint and tamarind sauces for dipping. Our third entree was something very unique in Auckland — dahi kababs were apparently created in the royal kitchens by edict: the aging monarchs had demanded softer food. And so the chefs created a grilled curd — a young cheese mixed with spices and apricots then, somehow, compressed and grilled so that the outside is baked while the inside is still gooey and packed with flavour. The kababs are served simply, with a little apricot chutney on top, and they are unmissable.

I was glad we tried dal bukhara, a black lentil dish that transforms after 12 hours’ cooking into a buttery gravy, while the individual pulses remain firm to the bite. There’s a background flavour of fenugreek — a spice that never smells appealing in a jar but is transformed when used judiciously with the right ingredient — and the dish is finished with ghee, a deceptively flavourful fat that turns good into great.

Another dish featured bright green spinach sauce with burrata in the middle of the plate — I guess this Italian ingredient is a kind of paneer and it really worked, with the cream inside the mozza ball adding richness to the gravy as you stirred.

We mopped the dahl up with laccha — a flaky, layered flatbread with the odd natural hole here and there and the fat bits of the bread singed black where it had touched the tandoor.

Gaurav said “look at your fingers” — an instruction I don’t think I’ve received at a restaurant before. “Notice they aren’t red — so no food colouring.”

He was perhaps not the most demonstrative restaurant guest but the quiet approval of somebody who grew up in India spoke volumes. And there is plenty to love at Rahi, even if you’re not an expert.