Masala Cafe Brings the Dishes of Chennai to Jersey City – Eater NY

Sometimes it looks like the restaurateurs of Jersey City’s India Square are enjoying an elaborate sport of musical chairs. The 30 or so restaurant storefronts on the two-block strip shutter after which reopen with totally different names, however usually presenting related menus of dosas or biryanis. Occasionally a newcomer seems with a special culinary strategy, and Masala Cafe is such a spot.

Masala Cafe’s inside

It was spawned final October by a restaurant with an identical identify in downtown Newark devoted to South Indian meals, however with heaps of northern, Indo-Chinese, and citified road eats thrown into the combine, making for a menu with one thing for everybody. But many of the eating institutions in Jersey City already cowl these bases; clearly one thing totally different was wanted. So, proprietor and chef P. Chelladurai determined to focus extra intently on the delicacies of Chennai, a metropolis in the Tamil Nadu state on India’s southeast coast. Formerly generally known as Madras, the metropolis was traditionally well-known for its textile trade. Chelladurai grew up in Periyapalayam, a city on the Arani river northwest of the metropolis.

Through one of my visitors who served as translator, the chef advised us one night in Tamil, “I was in IT before, and thought it would be fun to open a restaurant. I looked around and realized there was no authentic place devoted exclusively to the cooking of Madras.” He additionally beneficial a number of dishes, and I managed to strive most of them on three visits. The restaurant occupies a deep house culminating in a kitchen, with two parallel eating rooms, one adorned with colourful plates, the different with supergraphic photograph photographs of spices.

The restaurant labels itself Chettinad, referring to one of Tamil Nadu’s cultural teams, the Chettiars, who’re liable for one of the state’s dominant cuisines. Its recipes are well-known for his or her subtlety and sophisticated floor-spice aromas, with flavors stated to mirror the dry local weather. Appetizers are a powerful level on Masala Cafe’s menu, although most might additionally perform as primary programs when rice is ordered.

Kozhi milagu varuval, also called black pepper rooster

Flaky southern Indian parotta

Kozhi milagu varuval ($13.99) is a traditional: bone-in rooster components coated with a darkish-beige gravy, with heaps of ginger and black pepper — a spice native to India that predated the look of chiles from South America in the late 15th century. In reality, the delicacies’s oldest recipes could be usually be recognized via their use of black pepper somewhat than chiles. The dish arrives strewn with cilantro and uncooked purple onions, and is finest eaten with parotta, a flaky spherical flatbread that falls aside in layers. “It’s buttery like a croissant, only flakier,” a buddy famous one afternoon.

Another exceptional appetizer, and doubtlessly nice brunch dish, is egg murtaba ($10.99). It consists of a complete-wheat crust folded over a spicy egg filling, stacked on the plate like shirts in a drawer, and accompanied by an onion raita and a masala gravy. Dip the slices in both and revel in. For a slight further cost, you may have your murtaba filled with rooster or mutton, however I want the mellowing impact of eggs. The recipe apparently originated in the Middle East, and was carried by the tides of Islam all the manner to Singapore and Malaysia, stopping in far southern India alongside the manner for the nation’s personal distinctive spin.

Egg murtaba, initially from the Middle East

Spicy poondu kuzhambu

Thalappakatt rooster biryani

Surprises linger round each nook on Masala Cafe’s menu, with heaps of dishes that had been unfamiliar to me. Like Oaxacan delicacies, by which moles perform as primary programs, whether or not you toss in meat or not, Chettinad delicacies has stand-alone sauces match for a meal. “Spicy poondu kuzhambu” ($11.99) is one: a garlicky and splendidly oily tomato sauce that is likely to be mistaken for one thing you ate in Sicily, apart from its panoply of flavors, together with heaps and much of kari — the tiny, shiny, darkish inexperienced, astringent herb also called curry leaf. Poured over basmati rice, the thick sauce makes an incredible vegetarian repast.

But the rice you get at the cafe is just not all the time the lengthy and crooked-grained basmati. Thalappakatti rooster biryani ($14.99) makes use of a particular quick-grain rice typically present in biryanis of southern India. This explicit preparation identify-checks a resort restaurant in the metropolis of Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, the place in the late 1950s the recipe was invented and achieved regional fame. Served with raita and a tomato-primarily based sauce, and topped with a boiled egg, the biryani is distinctive, even amongst this biryani-heavy strip of Indian eating places. Even now I can bear in mind its refined flavors and perfume, with out being fairly in a position to describe them, apart from offering a video to attest to its complexity.

The meals at Masala Cafe is commonly spicy, however you may deliver your personal beer from a bodega round the nook on Tonnelle Avenue. Somehow, beer stanches the burn in a manner even the creamy rosewater lassi ($four.50) can’t.

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