Gurkha's Nepalese Restaurant, Brunswick

Ever had Nepalese food before? It is rather like Indian food and Chinese food, as Nepal borders both India and China. For example, momos are influenced by the chinese dumplings, and dhals influenced by indian cooking. 

We were indecisive on what to order so had the simple banquet ($27 pp). We received these dishes: 

Entree was Gurka's Special which was fried lentils and spiced potatoes topped with yoghurt served in a pappadum cup. The texture was a mix of crispy from the fried lentils and soft (yoghurt).

Chilli chicken is one of the main dish. The chicken pieces were deep fried then sauted with capsicum in a sweetish, chilly sauce. Although the name of the dish was chilli chicken, it was not spicy at all which I was fine with. This dish would be a chinese influenced dish as I have a chinese recipe that is almost the same, except it has the addition of dried chillies.

Matar Paneer is a dish made of cottage cheese, in a creamy curry sauce with green peas. It is very creamy as the name suggests and is delicious when paired with basmati rice. It would be perfect with some roti but there was already too much food for us.

There were also Mutton Curry and Dhal. I must say that the mutton curry is where I wished it had a bit of spicy kick like the Indian curries have. The cut of mutton used in this dish has a dry texture, whereas I'd expected a springy texture. So although I love mutton and mutton curries, I liked this dish the least in the banquet.

For dessert, the waitperson was kind enough to offer us two different desserts when the menu specified we were to choose between one or the other. On the right there is Khir or rice pudding and the left, Rato Mohan or cottage cheese balls.

I liked the Rato Mohan very much, it is similar to Gulab Jamun in Indian cuisine. It is deep fried cottage cheese balls soaked in syrup.

It takes a little getting used to for the rice pudding which was spiced with cardamom, cloves and other spices. Being used to rice as a savoury dish, it'll take some time to get used to a sweet rice dish like rice pudding. So it was a dish for Gaz the vacumm cleaner to finish up.

I love the waitpersons' friendly and easy going attitudes. The amount of food was definitely enough for the both of us, so much we took some leftovers. The banquet was a good choice because it gave us an idea of what we would like to order again, and also to keep an open mind of what the dishes would taste like. For example, curries didn't necessarily mean it would be full of chillies.