Discovering Indian at Aki’s, Woolloomooloo

India is a bit of a mystery to me – I’ve not visited her crowded colourful shores, or experienced the culture which I perceive as foreign, in-your-face confronting and mesmerisingly intoxicating all at once.

The Co-pilot journeyed to India 3 years ago and came back with detailed accounts and remarkable photos of exotic cities coloured a startling vivid blue, pink or stark, pristine white; throngs of people, the permanent loss of personal space and curious children clamouring to peer into his camera lens, their beautiful kohl-ringed gazes full of intrigue and innocence; and the  joy of watching the Australia vs India test in Mumbai surrounded by the palpable passion of the Indian supporters. They are all foreign experiences to me (especially the last).

Similarly the food of India has been a mystery to me. Aside from the few stereotypical dishes and curries I am not familiar with depth or breadth the cuisine offers, its intricacies, historical influences or even the significance of certain dishes and the occasions they’re prepared for. As Australians we don’t harbour the same love for Indian cuisine as the British do – evidenced by the fact that former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook claimed the Indian dish, Chicken Tikka Masala, as the true British national dish displacing old, traditional English favourites like Yorkshire Pudding and fish and chips.

When asking British nationals what they think of Indian cuisine in Sydney and their recommendations, invariably, they channel the barely concealed inner food critic and speak in authoritative tones about what real Indian food tastes like and with a nostalgic faraway look, how good the Indian food was back home in London. The Co-pilot agrees that Indian food in England is remarkably good – better than Sydney and even better than the Indian food he sampled in India – simply because of the lack of good fresh produce in many parts of India – and flavour and passion alone a dish does not make. And my own experiences with Indian food in Sydney have been thus far largely uninspiring.

A meal at Aki’s presented the opportunity to change our views on Indian food. Chef and owner, Kumar Mahadevan opened his first restaurant Abhi’s in North Strathfield in 1990 and Aki’s was the more recent addition opening 4 years ago in Woolloomooloo – both restaurants are named after his sons. Chef Kumar recently appeared on MasterChef, making his Chennai Prawn Vendaki (a prawn and okra curry) from his native Chennai for a MasterChef Masterclass session.

On an overcast day, the Co-pilot and I presented ourselves for a long and leisurely lunch at Aki’s, located on Cowper Wharf road in Woolloomooloo. I have long been a fan of this area – the sweeping views out onto the harbour and back over the city make for a great backdrop to a meal and as I associate the area with long, boozy client lunches, I find myself instantly lazy and relaxed. We find a very attentive maître d’ in Samson Judge, and he seats us outside in a perfect people watching spot and introduces the day’s specials and talks us through the menu. We find him so informed and knowledgeable that we leave our choices in his capable hands.

We take the opportunity to browse around inside the restaurant and find tables  packed with groups of young diners enjoying their meals. It’s warmer, cosier but darker inside. I much prefer our vitamin D soaked vantage point outside – that, and it’s more forgiving for photos!

For our entree, Samson has recommended the seafood platter with the blue swimmer crab in the platter replaced by individual portions of the Chef’s signature dish, crab iddiappam.

The crab iddiappam arrived first and I drank in the sight of it greedily. The dish is composed of shelled blue swimmer crab tossed with black mustard seeds, fresh tomatoes and ginger served with traditional Tamil brown rice string hoppers and a coconut cream broth. I am quite a fan of crab and noted the large fleshy pieces of whole crab leg in the dish. And it tastes fantastic – the salty sea flavour of the crab shines, but there are the herby hints of coriander and ginger and the aromatic crunch of fennel and mustard seeds. With the thin coconut cream broth poured over the dish it becomes even more rich and fragrant. I’ve not eaten a hopper before, and the brown rice hopper didn’t have a  firm, robust almost crispy texture as I’d expected but a very soft, fragile one.  Spooning in great mouthfuls of the dish it is almost like an indulgent crab laksa – the crab pieces, coconut broth and hopper strings melt away in a flash. Whilst tasty, personally I think I would have preferred a crispier contrast in texture from the hopper.

The accompanying Pinot Grigio is light, acidic and citrusy and compliments the richer flavours of the seafood very nicely.

The rest of the entree platter is brought out containing pan-fried prawns, salt and pepper squid and an array of accompanying sauces and chutneys.

The pan-fried prawns have been dry fried with plenty of spices and young curry leaves – the effect is an intense burst of spicy flavour on the plump, tender prawns. The batter on the squid is wonderfully light and crispy and we analyse it carefully as we like making salt and pepper dishes at home and are constantly on the hunt for the perfect batter. We note with interest that the squid has been dusted with spiced tapioca flour and make a mental note to buy some tapioca flour to try this dish at home. The squid is buttery soft and tender and we find that the prawns and squid have enough flavour to speak for themselves, but for those seeking more there are pea, beetroot, tomato and onion chutneys and a tamarind and ginger dipping sauce each adding a different dimension of flavour to the prawn and squid.

The first of our mains is the dish Chef Kumar has popularised on the MasterChef Masterclass segment, Chennai Prawn Vendaki or prawn and okra curry. As the title suggests, the dish is from the chef’s native Chennai, a coastal city – hence the use of prawns in this dish and the heavy influence of seafood throughout the menu.

My first impression of this dish’s flavour is that it’s subtle and comforting – the flavour is rich in tomato, so savoury, with a hint of sourness from the tamarind and light in those sometimes overpowering aromatic flavours like mustard seeds, fenugreek and cumin. It isn’t the spicy or confronting wall of flavour that delivers a warrior’s blow to your senses – something I’ve come to expect from Indian food – it is the opposite – a very gentle and comforting maiden’s caress and very enjoyable. The supersized prawns and juicy and still retain the characteristic crunch of freshness and the okra doesn’t have the unpleasant slimy texture it can sometimes get, instead it has acted like a sponge to soak up all the sauce.

Our other main is the wagyu beef ullathu – wagyu beef medallions dry fried in spices and adorned with dry roasted coconut shavings that resemble strewn blossom petals.

The flavour of this dish is more the style of Indian cooking I expected – the dry fried onion and spices make it so intensely flavour packed, savoury, bold and gutsy. The wagyu medallions are melt-in-your-mouth tender and the dryness of the dish allows you to taste the texture of the abundant gritty spices coating each rich, silky medallion.  And to think that traditionally, the strong overwhelming flavours of spices and curries were used to mask the flavour of poor or even spoiling meat when preservation wasn’t widely used! The Co-pilot seemed to be most enamoured with the intense flavour of the dry-fried spices in this dish and voted this his favourite dish.

Our mains are paired with a Lengs and Cooter shiraz from McLaren Vale in South Australia – a mellow, berry-rich and chocolatey shiraz typical of warm climate Australian shiraz. The pepperyness we usually associate with a cold climate Australian shiraz is absent, except when paired with the spicy wagyu beef ullathu – then unexpectantly the dormant pepperyness is brought to the forefront.

Accompanying our mains was also a side of vegetable kofta curry, garlic naan and steamed rice.

The kofta curry is surprisingly good and though the creamy, soft kofta are drowned in a soupy curry they have enough flavour to take centre stage. I noted that the mix in the koftas sound rather exotic with vegetables, fruit, herbs, lemon, sultanas and yoghurt – reminding us of the arabic influenced dishes we found in Southern Italy. This might be a likely influence given Chennai (formerly Madras) was once a busy port under Portuguese rule in the 16th century and again under British rule in the 17th century and was thus likely to have done spice trades with Arabic sea-faring traders.

We’re pleasantly full but find just the right amount of room for dessert and Samson unequivocally recommends the kulfi ice cream for dessert.

The ice cream is made using milk laced with cardamom that has simmered and reduced down till it is sticky from its constituent protein and sugar parts, frozen into an ice cream, topped with pistachios and served with a strawberry coulis. I am very very wary of Indian sweets and desserts. I usually find them so excruciatingly sweet for my palate that I can feel sugar crystals spontaneously reforming and threatening to ooze from my orifices. This dessert is just right in sweetness. It tastes like it sounds – a condensed milk ice cream and the frozen quality of the ice cream also aids in keeping the sweetness at bay. The cardamom spices find their way through to subtly perfume the ice cream with their flavour.

To finish I take note of the late hour and ask for a cup of the traditional chai, which takes 15 minutes to brew. Our next engagement is a movie with a friend but we had ample time.

Whilst we wait for the chai to be made, the roiling dark clouds and incessant dripping cease and slowly give way to a few rays of precious sunshine. After what seems to be the longest 15 minutes of our lives (I suspect they forgot our order), the steaming chai is finally brought out and we enjoy whilst bathed in a rare shard of sunshine. The chai is not horrifically sweet and frothy as the Co-pilot warned when reminiscing of chais he had in India – the scent of cinnamon, cumin and cloves is present but not overpowering and it retains the taste of black tea. Thankfully, the sweetness is left to the diner to control too.

We wanted to sit and leisurely savour the warmth and golden light of the low setting sun on the horizon, succumbing to the comforting blanket of food coma but we’re out of time and we leave in a hurry, racing across the city to the cinema where our friend waits anxiously inside. That chai might have taken a tad too long as the tickets are sold out and our friend sat inside, very alone and very unimpressed with us for deserting her. I am truly sorry Katie.

We console ourselves with the knowledge that we had a very impressive Indian meal at Aki’s – one I can whole heartedly say was the best Indian meal I’ve had thus far and it changed my perception of the spectrum of flavours and ingredients in Indian food – even if it did mainly focus on Southern Indian cuisine. In trying to dissect the flavours I’ve discovered a bit more about the historical flavour influences too and feel the urge to visit India’s shores to explore and understand the culture and cuisine better for myself. And on another note, perhaps I can take Katie to Aki’s or better yet, try the sister restaurant Abhi’s in North Strathfield to make up for our disastrous movie date.

The Co-pilot and I dined at Aki’s as guests of Wasamedia and Aki’s.

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Address:

Aki’s Indian

6 Cowper Wharf Road, Woolloomooloo

Tel: 9332-4600; email: i...@akisindian.com.au

Open for lunch: Sun – Fri from 12 noon; dinner: 7 days from 6pm.

www.akisindian.com.au

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Tagged as: Aki's, Indian, Kumar Mahadevan, Masterchef, prawn okra vendaki, Woolloomooloo