Jesse Mulligan’s Auckland Restaurant Review: K Rd’s XO Mangal Serves Craveable Food In A Cosy Setting

XO MANGAL

Cuisine: Pan-Asian

Address: 271 Karangahape Rd

Reservations: Accepted

Phone: (09) 377 0007

Website: Satya.co.nz/xo-mangal

Drinks: Fully licensed

From the menu: Paneer curry $26; prawn sando $16; chicken wings $8ea; Brussels sprouts $16; pork ribs $35; lamb kofta $18; bavette steak and bone marrow $65; baby cos $12; cucumber salad $14.

Rating: 16/20

There’s a real city excitement around XO Mangal, a pop-up concept inside of Satya Chai Lounge — one of my favourite permanent restaurants. When my wife turned [significant number] we had a party at their bar next door, an occasion so successful that Victoria didn’t even notice the platters of incredible Indian street snacks that were circulating for the entire event.

“Was there food?” she asked me the next day, while nursing a larger than expected hangover and, with my gentle assistance, piecing together the latter stages of the evening and the journey home.

There was. Mouthwatering, deeply spiced, deeply fried food. For the rest of us at least, it did a good job of soaking up the cocktails and making us thirsty for more. The best word for this sort of cuisine is craveable.

But for Samrudh Akuthota, son of an Auckland restaurant dynasty, a child born into hospitality and raised in the soft warm glow of the Satya tandoor oven; for Sammy, craveability is a condition whose maximum point can never be reached.

I don’t know who looks at a deconstructed onion bhaji — described by me in 2018 as “strands of onion battered in a spice mix that tasted like Burger Rings then served in a generous heap” — and thinks “naaaah, not tasty enough” but Sammy apparently thinks there is still more flavour and texture to be extracted from a handful of proteins, a basket of vegetables and a rack of one thousand spices.

So for this project he’s enlisted Alfie Ingham — ex Sidart, Cassia, Meredith’s and, most famously, Hugo’s Bistro — to take some of that Satya Chai Lounge sensibility and inject Asian regional cooking so that while the geographical boundaries to the menu have somewhat dissolved, the same test remains: everything on the table should make you say, to paraphrase Action Bronson, “damn, that’s delicious”.

The tempura prawns was one of my favourite dishes at the Chai Lounge but they’ve somehow managed to go one better here. The prawns are not whole anymore but whizzed up a little then crumbed in something and fried. That hot, tasty little fritter is then topped with Marie Rose (the sauce you put on shrimp cocktails) and placed between two slices of thin “milk” bread to form a sando or Japanese sandwich. That bread soaks up all the good stuff and though the lumpy fist of prawn is a bit of a mismatch for the two tiny rectangles of soft bread, the whole thing just manages to stay together on its short journey towards your mouth.

There’d be worse things in the world than scoffing five of these with a beer then going home to bed.

But we had other things to eat. In fact, we had everything to eat. There were three of us in our party and, as the menu was focused mostly on small plates, I took the rare opportunity to order one of each (I believe everybody should, at least once in their life, receive a menu from a waiter, look at it briefly then hand it back to him and say “Yes, please”).

I can therefore rank all of the savoury dishes from highest to lowest and they go like this: paneer tikka masala, prawn sando, chicken wings, Brussels sprouts, pork ribs, lamb kofta, bone marrow, baby cos and cucumber salad.

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The baby cos might be unlucky to be near the bottom — a fresh cold salad on the side no doubt makes the other stuff taste better but the cucumber salad was a bit disappointing. Some nations base their entire culinary reputation on the simple combo of cucumber and extreme flavour but here it just came with yoghurt and some cumin seeds that didn’t really integrate, for me.

The only other thing to mention slightly critically is the bone marrow dish, which admittedly wasn’t served to us with the steak it’s usually paired with (long story, not worth it) but I think should have had a bit more flavour — it came with (excellent) charred flatbread and onion salad but nothing to make you swear with excitement.

Everything else on the menu will make you squeal with delight. Unsurprisingly the paneer curry is perfect. And those chicken wings, wow. With the dim lighting and the cocktail-dimmed brain, I will admit that I’m not quite sure what was going on with them — a heap of crunch, a heap of spice and the moreishness of online gambling.

The Brussels sprouts disappeared quickly too — inspired I think by a similar dish at Momofuku, they come in a nam jim (Thai dipping sauce) dressing, though not as much of it as I wanted. They’re also sprinkled with fresh red chillies that are so hot they’ll likely put you out of action for a few minutes.

A good chance to have a drink. The cocktail menu forms a key part of the experience here and I’d make sure you had at least one before moving on to something else — possibly the house selection of craft beers, lovingly curated by hopophile Sammy.

You’ll likely have just a few weeks to try XO Mangal before things return to normal at Satya Chai Lounge and Alfie moves on to his next project in Pollen St. It’s well worth a visit, for next time you’re craving flavour and want to teach your mouth a lesson.