Mehfil Indian Cuisine
792 Somerset St W., 613-695-4345,
mehfilcuisine.com
Open:
Dining room closed due to COVID-19; takeout and delivery Sunday to Thursday 4 to 8 p.m., Friday to Saturday 4 to 9 p.m.
Prices:
dishes up to $18.95
The spice-averse teenager among us was doing her best to assuage the heat and sourness that was making her mouth throb.
She tried a spoonful or two of raita, South Asia’s most cooling condiment. The tangy, cucumber-flecked yogurt brought some relief, but not as much as she would have liked.
And yet, she still thought highly of the dish that ignited her taste buds — Mehfil Shrimp, the specialty from Mehil Indian Cuisine on Somerset Street West.
The rest of us, with our greater enthusiasm for more fiery fare, were even happier with those potent little shrimps, and with the range of items we ordered from Mehfil, which had its grand opening almost exactly a year ago.
Before the novel coronavirus changed everything in mid-March, Mehfil wooed customers with buffet lunches and an extensive menu consisting of North Indian dishes and a few Hakka (Indo-Chinese) items. In the last few years, the latter dishes have increasingly been offered at new Indian restaurants in town.
But during the new COVID-19 normal, Mehfil has shut its dining room, like all of Ottawa’s restaurants, and stressed dinner-time pickup and deliveries orders via Uber Eats, SkipTheDishes and DoorDash.
We ordered twice from Mehfil and found most dishes won us over. In particular, items that were meant to be on the spicier, hotter side rewarded us with vibrant flavours and complexity.
Inevitably, some dishes were a little worse for wear after their 10-minute trip to our table. Naan breads wrapped in tin foil had lost a lot of their liveliness and needed some warming in our oven to be more appealing. Deep-fried items such as the Mehfil shrimp had degraded to a less crispy, slightly soggy state, but were otherwise still quite enjoyable.
In that latter category, along with the house special, were Mehfil’s Amritsari fish pakoras, which were lightly battered, simple treats made with basa fish coated in chickpea flour and bolstered by mint and tamarind sauces.
From Mehfil’s selection of Hakka dishes, chilli chicken provided a bracing Indian take on the heat and sourness of Sichuanese fare. Its breaded and deep-fried boneless chicken morsels were hefty and toothsome, and in particular the vegetables included with the dish left mouths calling out for raita.
Saag lamb featured tender chunks of meat (we could have swapped in chicken or shrimp) in a thick, peppery spinach purée. Butter chicken was as mild as requested, but with richness that made it more than just a kid-friendly item.
Of 14 vegetarian dishes, we tried the okra-heavy bhindi masala, which was pleasingly flavourful and properly textured, and the more mellow Amritsari baingan bharta, which we thought needed more oomph.
Rice pulao rice was fine. Chicken biryani was less impressive, especially because in Ottawa, I’ve found it very hard to surpass the magnificent chicken biryani served by the east-end restaurant NH44 Indian Bistro, which also offers takeout and delivery these days.
Mehfil is licensed, and Ontario’s pandemic conditions allow it sell alcohol to go. On its Facebook page, Mehfil notes that it can include Cheetah beer with takeout and delivery orders.
With our first order, Mehfil threw in some complimentary papadum, while our second order included basmati rice on the house. These were small gestures, but especially during this pandemic, every little kindness counts.