I love Indian food.
Just reading Mark Laba’s review of Cafe Mumbai in The Province today makes my mouth water. Cafe Mumbai is at 2893 West Broadway where Satima used to live.
You can take the curry out of Surrey but you can’t take the Surrey out of the curry. As home to one of Vancouver’s largest Indo-Canadian communities, it is no mystery that if it’s Indian food you crave, this is the suburban city to hit.
So when one of my favourite restaurants made the pilgrimage from the Scott Road strip of East Indian eateries to the increasingly well-heeled heart of Kitsilano (and some of those heels are stilettos, to boot, as the daughters of baby boomers discover Sex and the City values), I was hoping to find the recipes and the cooking unchanged.
It turns out that the owners of Mahek, the Surrey restaurant in question, actually sold their original place and hence the name change in Kits to Café Mumbai. Brothers Jaspal and Amarjeet Saini had great success with their original venture and I was hoping this new establishment would follow suit.
Peaches and I stepped into a spiffy room of subdued hues, turmeric-tinged walls softened by dimmed lighting and highlighted in spots by splashes of reflecting brass knickknacks, pale wood furnishings offset by darker gold tones and an unusual silvery metal backdrop, like the panel off a spaceship, behind the dark wood bar.
Menu-wise, there are a few new entries to the lineup, but it was the old standbys that Peaches and I sought out first. The butter chicken ($12.95) here has a sauce so texturally luxurious I’d offer it in a spa as a rejuvenating bath. On the tastebud level, this is a spicier butter chicken than most I’ve slobbered over, which is fine by me, because I think all poultry needs a bit of a kick in the pants if it’s going to make it out of the coop and onto a plate.
If you’re mouth is watering too, be sure to read the complete review.
June 9th Update: Had dinner at Cafe Mumbai tonight it was excellent – definitely worth stopping by.
Last modified: June 8, 2008
