TripAdvisor is being wonky about letting me write a review for a restaurant it doesn’t have listed; it has me stuck in a loop, insisting that I confirm that it is in an unlisted city, which it is not. Anyway, here’s the review I would have posted there.

A local resident recommended Surya Mahal (Shop No A, 179, MI Road) as the pure vegetarian place he goes with his family. It is indeed a family restaurant, down to paper placemats with absolutely terrible jokes on them.

But the food was just so good.

The menu includes Chinese and Italian, as well as Indian. We had the King’s Tali: little dishes of malai kofta, paneer butter masala, vegetable pulao (rice), some type of dal, and a raita (spiced yogurt) plus papadam, bread (we got roti) and two gulab jamuns. One tali served both of us.

Everything was exceptionally delicious: richly flavored, nicely textured. We ate all of everything and left satisfied in every direction. I’m no expert on Indian food, but I’m going to stand by what I just said.

Plus the children running around were adorable.

The owner (or so we assumed) was very helpful and enthusiastic. He honored our counter-cultural request that the food not be very hot in the peppery sense; one of us is a wimp.

Total cost, including a large bottle of mineral water, was under 500 Rs. — about US$7.00.

One night when we woke up in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep (thanks to the lag of jets), I was thinking how, in my limited experience, almost all northern Indian food comes in lots of sauce or is a sauce itself. The following doggerel popped into my head:

Put on your galoshes
‘Cause everything sloshes.

Except the banan-
a, which is second to naan.

I had a third verse as well, but I eventually fell asleep and forgot it.

Just as well.

Categories: reviews, travel dw