Review: Punjabi Curry Cafe

I had the pleasure of being invited to dine at Punjabi Cafe. The interior decor is lovely with mood lighting and bright colours. The food was also really good quality while still being a reasonable price, and they serve a variety of meat, seafood and vegetarian options for various dietary requirements.

Mango Lassi - $3.99
I've never been served lassi in a cocktail glass but I loved the nice
presentation and generous serving size.

Chaat Papri - $8.99
I wanted to try something new and as the mains were meat dishes,
I wanted something vegetarian. We opted for the Chaat Papri, not knowing
what it was. I was expecting a hot dish, which I most wanted on a cold winter's night,
but it was actually a cold dish with filo, potato, chickpeas, yoghurt and chutneys.
Overall I found the sauce too overpowering and the dish too cold, even
serving it at room temperature would have been much preferred.
Firstly, I couldn't tell the pastry was filo, it had some layers and was crispy
but lacked that tissue-like flakiness of filo. The potatoes and chickpeas
were cooked well but hard to find in the sea of sauce.
The yoghurt and chutneys tasted like a mix of yoghurt, tomato and bbq sauce,
with a hint of spice, and was not a flavour combination I really liked.
Overall, I believe if the sauce was used sparingly as more of a dressing I would
have much preferred this dish.

Garlic Naan - $3.99
4 pieces of light and crispy naan. You can see the chef making them at
the back of the restaurant, tossing it around with his hands, truly amazing.
The garlic flavour wasn't very strong but the bread still had that lovely salty, smoky flavour.

Butter Chicken - $18.99
Lovely creamy tomato based curry with that smoky tandoor chicken.
My favourite part of butter chicken is that smoky flavour and
that is what this delivered. The chicken was well cooked, some pieces did
have small bones so had to be careful. Overall one of the best
butter chickens I've ever had, and a generous ratio of meat to sauce.

Lamb Vindaloo - $18.99
The waitress was concerned I couldn't handle the spice but I loved it.
The first bite definitely hit me with the chilli but that quickly disappated
and I was left with a lovely flavour of complexes spices. Some pieces of
lamb were dry and chewy, might have been cut the wrong way,
but otherwise, the curry was thick and flavoursome, and the
heat definitely did not disappoint. p.s. they can accommodate different
spice tolerances.