|
Award-winning restaurant Sesame in New Malden, Surrey has served up
its latest in a series of special Festival created by the talented chef.
This time the focus is on Bengali food covering West Bengal and
Bangladesh and the results are very much up to expectations. Diners
can still choose from the regular menu but we cose the Festival menu
and opened up with a perfectly cookes Salmon Tikka, wel spiced
Chicken Pakora with a dipping sauce that was probably not the best
choice (tamarind would have been better) and Chingri Kofta with
wonderful Bengali spicing offset by the tangy tamarind sauce.
Not suprisingly for that part of the world, there are numerous fish
dishes to choose from but although tempted, I decided to miss the
Hilsa offering as I have never thought the real taste of this
exciting fish travels well beyond the sub-continent. Instead I went
for another King Prawn dish with the same tangy Bengali mustard seed
spicing and was pleased to find the prawns perfectly cooked with that
slight crunch instead of the sigginess experience in many
restaurants. The Lamb Rejala and Beef Bhuna both had jiucy, tender
meat with subtle, hottish spicing and the Dhal Bhuna was wonderfully
thick for scooping up by the lache paratha.
We washed the meal down with a very good Pearl Spring Chenin Blanc
which cut through the spicing with its clean taste and acted as the
perfect foil to the food. Despite not having the fashiobale pedigree
of some other restaurants, Sesame continues to surprise and delight
and we now look forward to their next Festival offering. |
