Cakes And Ale

We can't keep away from this place. Above: Chicken Korma. Below: all our dishes.

Lamb Biryani.

And finally, a dish I don't think I've had here: Punjab Saag.

Vegetable Korma.

Goat Curry.

Lamb Biryani.

My buddy Jeff & I checked out Mirchi for lunch on Thursday: above is the Bhel Puri appetizer, and below are our Thali Chicken plates. We got the Mirchi Classic Chicken Cury, Chicken Tikka Masala, Chicken Korma and Chicken Vindaloo. Also we ordered it Extra Spicy. Very vivid flavors.

Another recent visit (10/10).

Spinach Dosas. Vegan, and quite possibly the best dosa I've ever had (the other one would be another vegan dosa at Mirchi).

After the dosa, we had Lamb Korma (middle left) and Goat Curry (right foreground). I've already raved about these dishes in previous blog posts. Below, you get an idea how tender the slow-cooked Goat Curry is.

We're more and more impressed with Mirchi Indian Grill in Benicia. We went there again last night, another fabulous, vibrant display of culinary prowess, dishes with a high level of nuance, prepared by chefs of the highest calibre: in other words, it tasted like a home-cooked meal, made with love.

Baingan Bhartha: eggplant and onions caramelized to produce a rich, nutty complex background to this dish with peas, teeming with flavor from the spices, and like made with ghee. Most accomplished version of this dish I've encountered yet.

Lamb Korma: the cashew-based Korma curry explodes with the flavor of Indian spices (cumin, garlic, chiles, coriander, mustard seeds, ginger and more), an exalted medium upon which luscious chunks of lamb melt in your mouth.

From left: coconut, tomato and peanut curry delivered with the dosas. Need I even suggest these are made in house?

Similar to the Veggie Dosas I was raving about last time, but we tried something different last night, Chicken Dosa, which included tiny diced chicken along with the perfectly cooked vegetables. We also got a perfect cup of Dal, which comes with Dosa orders. Sublime.

Apparently the epicenter for Indian cuisine in the Bay Area is Fremont, but now there's great Indian restaurants all over. Mirchi Indian Grill just opened recently in a strip center in Western Benecia, by the same ownership group with Aroma in Downtown Benecia and Napa. All of these restaurants are quite good, but Mirchi is a cut above. One thing that really stands out is they have mastered both North and South Indian dishes, which is increasingly common in Indian restaurants these days.

Last time we got Lamb Curry, Bhel Puri, Lahori Fish, and a Spinach Dosa. This time we opted for the Spring Dosa, Malai Kabob, & Kashmiri Naan. Note the coconut, peanut and tomato sauces up top, made in-house. And the dal soup.

Malai Kabob. Chicken breast marinated in a creamy cashew sauce, then cooked in a clay oven and served with sauteed onion and peppers. Chicken was moist & tender on the inside, nice char on the outside, with a spice permeating through. The lemon wedge provided add the exact acidic element that complements the spice and meat flavors. Extraordinary.

Look carefully at the contents of this vegan dosa: it'll let you know that Mirchi is playing at another level. Look at uniform small cut on the vegetables. Uniform so they'll cook at the same rate. Eighth inch square? Those are cut small, and they were cooked precisely to the appropriate doneness, which tells me the chefs/cooks really know what they're doing, when they do their prep. I suggest that as soon as they ladel the dosa dough on the flat top, they throw down this vegetable mix nearby, flipping it over once they've flipped the dosa. As brilliant as any I've ever had, and yet more evidence that Indian is about the only sophisticated Vegan cuisine out there.