Kari Apla is a heat and cosy house that gives elaborate flavours by bringing collectively the perfect of Kerala and Maharashtra in its well-curated menu, which appears to have been put collectively after a lot thought. Novelty is the primary level at this younger restaurant that gives intelligent seating in its restricted house – there are excessive stools in addition to just a few tables specified by the eating space, divided by a glass door that offers an excellent view of the humdrum of stay kitchen inside, as a few cooks go about doing their job of fixing luxurious meals in document time.
This restaurant tries to develop our notions of what a mix of Maharashtrian and Kerala cuisines may include, because it dives straight into conventional meals, beginning with favourites like steamed ambemohar rice, chilli parotta, Karwari Prawn curry and moilee with vattayappam – which implies a prawn curry created from coconut milk and smooth and spongy cake-like bread made with rice and coconut based mostly batter that’s first fermented after which steamed.
The menu is brief, crisp and easy; right here adjectives and nouns don’t spin in a loopy vortex. The menu right here supplies a completely excellent and dependable description of what really will come to the desk. Each, the Mangalorean kori sukka and the coconut bhakris that accompanied it, stood true to expectations – there was the trace of coconut within the bhakris, that are in any other case made to go well with a bland palette and the kori sukka was in actual fact, a ghee roast, as I had requested. Nonetheless, the Madurai mutton cutlets, which had been served with the pachadi sauce and onion salad which was nothing however plain onion rings, was a disappointment.
I used to be struck by how very removed from superior the dish was. We thought the Mutton cutlets, that are thought of a well-liked snack made utilizing minced lamb, mashed potatoes, spices and herbs can be an ideal begin to the four- course meal we had deliberate to take pleasure in, but it surely did not set the momentum. Whereas the style was okay, the feel of the cutlet didn’t really feel proper – it was flaky, though not crumbly, and was served with a candy sauce as an alternative of a pleasant inexperienced chutney that may elevate the style additional. Particularly as a result of the cutlets weren’t chilly both. Fortunately the meat was tender and flavourful and didn’t style like chewy air. The iced latte, the one drink that accompanied our meals, was completely chilled; it fired our urge for food additional. Our coconut pudding was just a bit over the dimensions of a normal scoop, may have been extra? Sure, please.
However why such small parts in each meal, we wish to ask founding couple and younger cooks Mathew Varghese and Ebaani Tewari, who began the enterprise in October final yr. The vattayappam that got here with the moilee had been simply two in quantity and had been so melt-in-your-mouth smooth that they acquired over in seconds with out filling us up in any respect.
I feel for that dish to be filling sufficient for somebody with a modest urge for food like mine, we might must order not less than ten to 12 of them to go along with that one bowl of curry. Similar with the rice and coconut-based bhakris that accompanied our hen – they had been extraordinarily skinny, lovingly smooth and surprisingly inadequate. With the couple providing us such flavourful meals, we want they might improve the portion measurement for us to be fortunately content material and smiling. Do go to this unbelievable place, which has a heat that makes it an oasis in opposition to the already bustling and noisy stretch of Mumbai’s Khar-Pali street.
