House of Mandi
1183 Hunt Club Rd., 613-737-3200,
houseofmandi.ca
,
instagram.com/mandi_ottawa
Open:
website says it opens from noon daily, but best to call ahead
Prices:
mains $20.99 to $25.99, sides $6.99 to $13.99
When you go to the House of Mandi, you must order the mandi.
For one thing, the iconic specialty from the Arabian Peninsula from which the Hunt Club Road restaurant takes its name is engrossingly tasty, bite after bite. At House of Mandi, you can have either a lamb shank or half-chicken -— both toothsome and “local and fresh,” the restaurant says — as a meaty centrepiece atop a big mound of saffron-yellowed, raisin-studded and intriguingly smoky basmati rice.
For another thing, the mandi lamb ($24.99) or mandi chicken ($20.99) might be the only available main courses of the six that are listed on the menu. At least that was what we found when we twice visited House of Mandi in the last week.
We could only imagine the enjoyable culinary discoveries that might have been after reading of Kabli lamb or chicken, dishes of “unique taste and flavour inspired by the Kabuli Palaw of Kabul (with) rice infused with orange zest among other remarkable spices,” not to mention Kabsa lamb or chicken, which mixed slowed-cooked meat later with basmati rice and topped with shredded carrots and fried onion.
But during COVID-19 times, when restaurants have to hunker down and watch their food costs, labour costs and food waste, it’s a bit churlish to get worked up about what’s unavailable due to a limited menu. Better to be grateful for what one can get. Plus, what we could order from House of Mandi, which opened two years ago in a tucked-away South Keys strip mall, was by and large very good.
At our first dinner, our non-Mandi dishes included four of 12 side dishes and one of six salads — just about one of every available item except for the green salad.
Sambosas of beef or vegetables ($7.99 for four) were exceptionally well-made and well-fried triangles of pastry stuffed with well-seasoned, distinctive fillings. They put many similar treats at other restaurants to shame.
Most interesting was jareesh ($12), an unassuming looking bowl of coarsely ground wheat that had been boiled with chicken, milk, cream cheese and spices, and topped with near-burnt fried onions and ghee (clarified butter). New to all of us, the rich and comforting dish with a light seam of smokiness brought risotto and congee to mind.
Fatteh ($11.99) featured of soft potato and softer fried eggplant with mellow garlicky yogurt, tomato sauce and the crunch of fried pita. Fatoosh salad ($8) brought tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers and onions to the table, topped with more fried pita and drizzles of pomegranate molasses.
While masoob ($12) was listed as a side dish, we ate the sweet-savoury item as our dessert. It made sense to conclude dinner with this bread pudding-like dish that combined ground whole wheat bread with mashed bananas, cream, honey and ghee with a topping of shredded cheddar cheese and black sesame seeds.
After that mid-week dinner, taken in the large, modern dining room where we sat at one of just a few occupied tables, we hoped that on a follow-up visit we would try different items — one of the Kabli or Kabsa mains, some stuffed grape leaves or stuffed vegetables and the unfamiliar looking mlookia, which we guessed was a soup of granulated mallow leaves, chicken stock, herbs and spices.
Given our previous dinner, we certainly had faith in the chef, who we were told was the wife of House of Mandi’s Saudi Arabian owner. Also, a peek at the restaurant’s Instagram page showed all kinds of dishes in catering-sized portions that tempted, even if their captions were in Arabic.
But when we phoned the restaurant, which was open from 3 p.m. rather than from noon as listed on its website, we were told that it was working with the same limited menu that we had chosen from four days earlier. The good news was that more beef sambosas and more lamb and chicken mandi were barely degraded after a 25-minute trip home in their quality containers, and we enjoyed the food on our back porch.
Mindful of the pandemic, House of Mandi, which along with the Yemeni restaurant Bukhari on Carling Avenue is one of Ottawa’s few Arabic eateries, has hand sanitizer at its entrance and serves bottled water. At our first visit, our server was masked. When we picked up food to go, staff were not masked. The restaurant has discontinued its buffet service, leaving a row of empty chafing dishes as a reminder.
We hope that when the pandemic ends, if not sooner, House of Mandi can expand on what it offered last week. But until then, its core dishes are more than sufficiently alluring and satisfying.