FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved

Food by Patrick Rengger Slowly but surely there are more and more Indian restaurants opening in Calgary. True, the idea of going for a curry hasn’t yet acquired the cheap, laddish currency it has in England, where a curry is something cheap and quick to eat after the pubs close and before you throw up from excess alcohol. In this city, eating Indian cuisine is still a "going out" kind of meal – and that is not necessarily a bad thing. While the combination of eight lagers and a curry is an experience, the subtlety of Indian food is something you can only truly explore while at least relatively sober. The Kashmir restaurant (507 - 17th Avenue S.W., phone 244 - 2294) has taken over the space vacated by the Moti Mahal when it moved to a new location on 14th Street. The renovations have opened things out a bit, and the old cozy if somewhat tatty charm has been replaced by something more stylish if less personal. The smoking section, a separate room, was large and completely empty when we went there, making it somewhat intimidating. The menu, of course, has more options than Vishnu has arms, sectioned off into the usual groups of lamb, chicken, vegetarian, beef and seafood. For starters we skipped the typical samosas and went for the pakodas ($4.40), which are a bit like pekoras, but spelled differently. One set was vegetarian and the other was cottage cheese, which, although surprising, was actually quite successful, particularly with the dipping sauce. The appetizers were not especially spicy, indeed none of the food my companion and I had was. The menu only had a few options which suggested any great heat – with a two-chili symbol – and judging by the one we had, this is not the place to come to clear your sinuses. Dishes such as the stuffed capsicum ($13) or the jalfrazie lamb ($12) were tempting, but we opted to ignore them. Butter chicken Tikka masala ($12) is something of the steak and potatoes of Indian cuisine – as good a yardstick as any by which to judge a restaurant – so I ordered that while my companion elected to sample the one-chili prawn curry ($13). The chicken masala had a piquancy and edge which I have not usually found with this dish, and while it was rich and smooth, the spicy elements of the sauce managed the magical trick of both adding to the traditional flavouring and detracting from its famed velvety quality. The prawn curry, on the other hand, had a subdued yet succulent taste, but seemed to be lacking in the expected heat that one associates with this particular curry. It was as if the chef decided to give with one hand and take with the other. Tastebuds less inclined to favour hot food will undoubtedly appreciate the seeming esthetic of Kashmir, which is to give a flavour of Indian food without the full-on possibilities of palate explosion. The Kashmir is on two levels – most of the seating is on the ground floor and is reasonably accessible for wheelchairs, and there is a smoking option. All in all it is perhaps not up to the standards of range and spiciness of the Moti Mahal, but nevertheless, Kashmir does offer some fine sub-continental dining on the 17th Avenue strip.

| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |