Restaurant and food reviews from Perth, Australia

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Himalayan Nepalese Restaurant & Cafe, Inglewood

Time for something different.  Time to head up north next to the tallest mountain in the world, and incidentally where it's no doubt freezing right now.  It's time for some Nepalese food.

As its name suggests, Himalayan Nepalese Restaurant & Cafe is a restaurant specialising in Nepalese food and has two branches - one in Victoria Park and one in Inglewood.  For my visit, we went to the one in Inglewood which is the newer of the two.  Himalayan Nepalese Restaurant & Cafe in Inglewood has a modern set up, with a cafe feel from the glass frontage to the furniture but with splashings of Nepalese pictures and decorations on the walls.

The menu is designed around share dishes, offering a decent selection of meat and seafood dishes prepared in a variety of ways, complemented by rice, bread, vegetable and side dishes as well as entrées.  To end the meal, there is a selection of desserts, largely Nepalese style desserts I haven't seen before.  There's also ice cream in there if you aren't feeling adventurous.

The service from the wait staff was friendly and helpful.  We were greeted with smiles, and served with cheery friendliness and helpful assistance to our questions.  I should also add that the restaurant is BYO so bring a bottle of wine if you fancy.

Chara ko Sekuwa - $21

The menu described this dish as tender pieces of chicken thigh marinated in special Nepalese spices with yoghurt, cooked in a Tandoori oven.  Sound similar to Tandoori chicken much?  Well, I thought this was better.

The chicken pieces were tender and moist, marinated in a mix similar to Tandoori but seemed a little more savoury with a fuller deeper flavour and the spices were infused to give the whole chicken pieces flavour.  To top if off, there was a slight charcoal taste adding further flavour.

The yoghurt dipping sauce was of a creamy sauce consistency, infused with mint.  Though sauces are usually welcome with any meat dish, we felt it wasn't necessary with this already well flavoured and tender chicken dish.

Himalayan Hot Lamb - $20

This dish was described as lamb cooked in a hot Nepalese spicy sauce. Specially for lovers of chilli.

Given I have my limits with chilli, I had to ask how hot this was before we ordered it.  The response was a little vague but we were told it wasn't too hot and we should be able to cope with it.  So we ordered it.

The verdict?  Well, the dish was quite hot but not inedible for me.  For the level of spice, I would say you best be a "lover of chilli" because the chilli is very pronounced and prevented me from indulging in too much of the sauce - and eating more of the Raita (below).

Other than the heat, the sauce was thick, with a distinct tomato flavour mixed into the earthy spices and chilli.  The lamb itself was tender like it had been cooked enough to tear away quite effortlessly.

Hario Sag-pat - $6.50

This Nepalese style salad was prepared with lettuce, cucumber, capsicum and tomato, and tossed with Nepalese dressing.

As you can see from the picture, the salad was basically chopped up pieces of the raw vegetables, and topped with more of the yoghurt mint dressing.  Though salads make you feel better about your meal, there wasn't really anything inspiring about this salad, and we were probably getting sick of the mint yoghurt taste of the dressing by this stage.

Kakro ra Dahi (Raita) - $4

This dish was described as a Nepalese style sorbet - made of chopped cucumber and sweetened yoghurt.

There was a lot of yoghurt throughout the dishes in this meal.  Though the sweetened acidic yoghurt (think natural yoghurt but lightly sweetened) with chopped cucumber helped moderate the spiciness of the hot lamb dish, we had enough yoghurt about halfway through the meal.

Garlic Naan - $5

Though there were different naan bread offerings on the menu (such as plain and topped with cheese), this Naan was topped with chopped garlic before cooking.  The result was that the naan was grilled with thin slices of garlic that crisped up in the cooking.

With a fair amount of oil, the naan had a delicious crispy garlic and salt flavour that we liked enough to order another serve.  Though beware the garlic breath!

We liked: Some good strong flavours with tender meats, without excessive prices; friendly and helpful wait staff

We didn't like: Too much yoghurt for our taste; restaurant can get noisy

Other things to note: BYO; not so vegetarian and even less so vegan friendly


Himalayan Nepalese Restaurant & Cafe
840 Beaufort Street
INGLEWOOD WA 6052
(08) 6161 9509
http://www.himalayanrestaurant.com.au

Trading Hours
LUNCH - 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM (Wed - Sun)
DINNER - 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM (7 Days)

Himalayan Nepalese Restaurant & Cafe on Urbanspoon

2 comments:

WenY said...

I had the one at Victoria Park! It was delicious :)! The momo's there feel like special version of the shanghai dumpling :)!

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