Mayur Indian Kitchen tries to be a bit of everything — North Indian and South Indian cuisine, vegetarian and non-vegetarian, halal and non-halal. They have four branches, each with a different menu and concept ranging from buffet to fine dining.
While I understand the idea of wanting to showcase India’s culinary diversity, my experience has been that restaurants who cultivate a niche tend to fair much better. That being said, the dishes were still artful and flavorful, and lacked the taste of being mass produced that many restaurants who try to do a bit of everything generally fall victim to.
I dined at Mayur Indian Kitchen’s newest branch on Tonghua Street (通化街). Being technically a buffet restaurant, there are no frills, just simple red and green walls, mirrors and colorful plates. The bar top is lined with endless bottles of spices. Though modest and compact, the establishment exudes a warm, neighborhood vibe, and by virtue of its location near Tonghua Night Market (通化夜市), well-marinated pork chops is a welcome option to greasy pork sausages.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
My dining companion and I opted for a la carte. The chef and owner, Mayur Srivastava, helped us thread through the exhaustive menu and recommend a few dishes — meat for me, vegetarian for my friend.
Of course, every Indian meal needs naan bread for dipping, so we decided on the garlic naan (NT$65). It was served fresh from the oven, crisp, fluffy and charred on the edges, the garlicy aroma adding an extra punch to the curries we paired it with. It worked well with the savory ginger taste of the chana masala (NT$245) for instance. The crunchy chickpeas were soaked in a mild curry grinded with various spices, onions and tomatoes, while small bits of ginger gave it added zest.
I quite fancied the sauces that were served with the Punjabi vegetable samosas (NT$150) — in fact, more than the samosas themselves. Both are homemade. One is a mildly sweet tamarind sauce, and the other, yogurt blended with coriander, mint, spinach and some spices. The coriander and mint were quite evident in the yogurt sauce, though not overwhelming so, but just enough to bring more pungency to the samosas. The samosa skin was not that crispy, and the potatoes and peas were quite a mouthful to digest. It was still done quite well, though the yogurt sauces were the stars of this show.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
For vegetarians, I recommend the Tandoori vegetables (NT$280). My vegetarian friend devoured the roasted veggies, dipping each piece of mushroom, capsicum and beet into the sweet tamarind sauce. The veggies were freshly marinated and roasted in a Tandoori oven, which gave it a tantalizingly charred quality without being overcooked. The best part, though, was the cooked apple hidden inside the mountain of veggies. It was unexpected but refreshing, its softer texture complementing the capsicums.
Now, on to the meat. The chicken tikka masala (NT$325), the Indian-British fusion that was named a UK national dish in 2001, was slightly different than what I remembered eating during my graduate school days in London. There were much more vegetables, and not as much curry. While I did not mind the added veggies — the tossed capsicums, peppers and onions mixed with spices were fragrant and crunchy — I would have preferred a creamier, heavier sauce. The roasted chicken was still elegantly done, tender and chewy.
The beef vindaloo (NT$350) was one of my favorite meat dishes. The strips of beef were nicely shredded and tender. The Goan-style curry it was soaked in was a delectable blend of sour and spicy. Also worth sampling is the roasted pork chops (NT$350). Marinated in barbecue sauce and served with fennel seeds, the pork chops tasted naturally sweet and were slightly charred and crisp around the edges.
Photo: Dana Ter, Taipei Times
Definitely check out Mayur Indian Kitchen’s Tonghua Street branch if you’re looking for a full, satisfying meal of curries and veggies. Sometimes, more is more.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist