tastebudds

486 Bridge road
Richmond 3121

Getting there: take trams 48 or 75 from flinders st
visit www.nirvanacafe.com


What I don’t like about this tiny café is how it shouts for attention with the overuse of newpaper features and giant, enlarged copies of the Cheap Eats best vegetarian dish award (which shall be revealed in just a bit) that are so eagerly plastered against their shop window. I don’t like places that try too hard to yank you in, especially when pleasing comfort awaits instore.

Having said that, it was absolutely impossible to find along Bridge Road. You would think that most cafes would try to carve a business along the busier strips, but this one had us on a wild goose chase, for we had no idea what to look out for. It would seem this café is as elusive as nirvana itself.

A first impression filled with Hindi music sounding like many clashing gold bangles greeted us. A woman, not-so-young, bore a sweet grin that looked worried at the same time, maybe because we seemed to be a indecisive bunch and was afraid we get up and leave. We were, after all, the only ones there. She quickly ushered us to the pink sponge-stuffed benches, scattered with pink and grey sequined cushions to match. She then runs back to the safety in the space behind the hotbar and props herself to WATCH US READ THE MENU. We look at her, she looks at us. We look away, glance back and still, she’s looking at us. It was so awkward! And it’s not as though we’re skinny white sunburned people smackbang in the middle of Bombay right?

We get the feeling that she’s very insecure…

…when really, there is no reason to. For lunch, they serve specials that entail a base of fragrant basmati rice, with a choice of 2 curries ($6) or 4 ($7), out of a possible four. They are: pumpkin, potato, lentil (daal) and chickpea. Because this café tends to serve Indian food that originates from the north, their curries tend not to take on a heaty disposition, resorting to a sweet blend instead. We rate their pumpkin as their best curry because it had the melt-in-your-mouth factor that was hugely satisfying in the cold; then followed closely by potato, chickpea, then lentil, which we found to be quite dry and unpleasantly paste-like.

And another great thing is that all these curries are healthy! They contain almost zero cholesterol because they don’t use any meat-derived products. Plus I quote, “beans and lentils are the best source of vegetable fibre. They also contain plenty of iron, potassium and protein!” Like, wow!

One thing we always succumb to is false advertising. When the menu said samosas cost $2, and out came ONE, you can imagine how cheated we felt. One miserable samosa between the three of us! Hmmph. For that we have taken away half a spoon from you, you I-can’t-keep-my-eyes-off-chinese-customers woman.

Ok… here comes their award-winning dish *indian drumrolls*, the Narratan Kofta ($13.80)!
Sounds so fancy-schmancy right?

Well, it is.

Kofta refers to anything that is minced into bitesized balls and in this case, it was a queer combination of paneer (Indian cottage cheese), that was really smooth and some other chewy spices I cannot differentiate. I do know that it was heavily DROWNED in a creamy butterscotch-coloured sauce with ginger and cardamom and maybe even fennel but I’m not too sure. When you first take a bite you are seriously, lost for words; not so much because it’s fantastically scrumptious or anything but rather you can’t tell the f--- what you’re eating.
By this point the once hip Hindu music did a one eighty and turned into some weird techno remix and immediately I imagine this deaf Indian DJ in the back spinning his own tunes while flipping chappatis.


Normally with Indian food you’d expect a lot of heat, which is why the trusty Lassi comes in handy. Lassi($3.80) is traditionally a yoghurt drink in the style of a milkshake, with simple honest flavours like rosewater. I did try their mango one (which is supposedly popular with her regular white customers) and yes, it has won me over! (I am now officially white. yay!)

Whilst the rest of you may not tolerate dairy so well, there’s always chai (Indian tea at $3) that has become hugely popular on recent years, finding itself in things like chai lattes and other essences. Chai contains the aforementioned cardamom and fennel, mixed with milk and sugar, and is traditionally ‘pulled’, by which I mean you transfer the tea from one cup to another to aerate it. I like chai, but dear liwei discovers it’s not quite his cup of tea. Mwhahahaha. Geddit?

Amongst their vast array of dishes include roti chanai (Indian flat bread at $2) and Kulfi (Indian ice cream at $4.50) and the rotiroll (Indian souvlaki at $6.50). But whatever you choose, you must be game enough to stick through the dish till the end, or else you may never discover nirvana…