Konkan

My love affair with ‘Indian’ food started back in student days. The Taj Mahal nestled, half-forgotten by the local planners whose compulsory purchase order had long since expired, under railway arches ripe for demolition should the local council ever win the lottery. The proprietor, Mr.Anwar, was a masterly multi-tasker performing the roles of waiter, occasional chef and personal relationship counsellor with equal facility. In his time he made many a mean chicken madras and helped heal probably an equivalent number of broken hearts. Sometimes his advice was a trifle wonky as when he advised my best mate Nina and I to marry. “Meera and I were married at 17 and we have had many glorious years,” he avowed. “You should get your parents to arrange it.” Thanks, Anwar, but no thanks. Lovely girl but we’d have broken each other’s heart.

We westerners disrespect Indian food, tending to lump together the total culinary output of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, replete as it is with regional differences. Even Nepal gets included, much to the disgust of Shiva Gautam who owns the excellent Monty’s Of Kathmandu. Then there’s the ‘c’ word.

At Tasting Australia last October I spent a morning with the well-known food writer Madhur Jaffrey to whom the word ‘curry’ is as degrading as ‘chop suey’, once used as a catch-all to describe Chinese food. “Curry is an inaccurate word which the world adopted from the British. Perhaps some English soldier overheard a mention of ‘kari’ a Tamil word meaning ‘sauce’. Or perhaps ‘karahi’, a cooking pot. To describe a cuisine as diverse as that of India simply as ‘curry’ is outrageous.”

She’s right of course but try telling that to the millions of piss heads who frequent ‘Indian’ restaurants after closing time, bawling for “chicken breast vindaloo, half rice, half chips.” Once the peculiar chemistry between a barrow load of lager and a plateful of spicy food became noted, the world gagged for it. Indian restaurants invaded suburban streets; seamen, textile workers and students became chefs; miles of embossed red flock wallpaper were unravelled; chicken tikka marsala was invented (in Birmingham) and streamlined menus offered a mixum-gatherum of everyone’s favourites – korma/bhuna/madras/vindaloo; lamb/chicken/prawns, any combination.

To be rescued from this curry lagoon we had to wait for ‘fine dining’. Young Indian chefs, mainly professionally trained in cookery schools and the kitchens of posh hotels became aware of the exciting advances in Western cuisine that had resulted in chefs being put on a pedestal and they wanted a slice of the action. For inspiration they turned back to their roots, exploring their own regional cuisine and that of other parts of the sub continent. A new breed of ‘Indian’ restaurants arose, exemplified in Ireland by the likes of Jaipur, Chakra, Poppadom, Kinara, Vermilion and Rasam.

Even given the ‘curry-lager’ syndrome, some restaurants, mainly small and family-owned, ploughed a lone furrow, offering fare of better quality and dishes of greater authenticity. It was at one of these that my chum Bangles and I hove up last Thursday night Konkan, hard by Harold’s Cross Bridge. Fine dining, Konkan ain’t. The décor could only be described as ‘homely’ but at least they’d dispensed with flock wallpaper.

We kicked off with a plate of starters, kebabs, samosas, pakoras; there seemed to be two of everything on the menu. The seekh kebabs were moist and juicy, nothing of that ‘month-old dog turd’ consistency you get from take-aways; the samosas were not wrapped in concrete overcoats. To the chicken malai tikkas – marinated with yoghurt, soft cheese and nutmeg, then grilled – we gave star billing. A promising start.

The chunks of lamb in my Pondicherry stew were fairly large, with the advantage that they didn’t disintegrate; they were obviously slow-cooked so they didn’t coalesce into hard nuggets; and, bathed in a mild cardamom and coriander enhanced coconut milk sauce, they were full of flavour. Bangles chose her main course to contrast so we could share. Murg Methi Malai was subtle but the snap of ginger came through, giving the chicken dish a piquant quality, I’d always interpreted ‘methi’ as spinach but these leaves, I was assured, were fenugreek.

The mains came with a big bowl of so-called lemon rice, every grain a roller. A misnomer though, because lemon was missing from the ingredients listed on the menu, though lime was in evidence. Citrus rice, perhaps, would be a safer description, to avoid some hyper-pernickety diner’s wrath.

We were stuffed. All we could manage for dessert was kulfi, that pistachio flavoured Indian ice cream, made grainy so you know it’s not HB (joke!). Konkan’s food is unpretentious, honest, and generously doled out. Service was unobtrusive but informative when we needed it to be. Oops, nearly forgot to mention the booze. When I’m eating ‘Indian’ food I don’t really mind what I drink. I’ll happily take water, tea, that yoghurt concoction they call ‘lassi’, lager or Guinness. Wine in this context does little for me except that I’ve noted on occasion that both the Austrian grape Gruner Veltliner and Riesling work quite well. Our bottle of Mills Reef 2003 New Zealand Riesling seemed fair value at e22. .

DAMAGE: 85 for all we ate and drink, including tip
QUALITY ***
AMBIENCE **
VALUE FOR MONEY ****

Konkan, 46 Upper Clanbrassil Street, Dublin 8 Tel: 01 473 8252 www.konkan.ie