Urban Tadka
Restaurant Review by Franz Scheurer
Urban Tadka is an Indian Restaurant that is set in beautiful parkland between Mona Vale and Myoora roads. It looks very Bollywood with a lovely, statue-guarded entrance and, towards an outdoor seating area to the south. Unfortunately immediate impressions are marred by a set of large, overflowing garbage bins, complete with broken bottles, which do not animate you to linger, let alone sit outdoors.
Once inside you find a seating corner next to a small bar and a long dining room extending from there all the way back to the screened off function area. They do brunch, lunch & dinner, do functions up to 300 people, do take away and (with a surcharge) home deliveries. They are licensed but the wine list leaves a lot to be desired…
Staff is friendly, helpful and engaging. Menus appear quickly, as does the wine list, and ice-cold tap water jugs are placed on the table. The glassware is very much design over function. It’s thick and clunky and although quite pretty it’s rather difficult to get your mouth around the rims.
The menu is extensive and there should be something for everyone. Who ever wrote the menu however, is very much into hyperbolic descriptions as everything is super special and most unique…
We order some samosas, which come with a small serving of room-temperature chickpeas. Next we try the ‘Lamb ki champe adraki’, lamb cutlets, made in the tandoor with a garlic, ginger and lime marinade. The samosas are good, not great, but the chickpeas rock. The lamb cutlets are a lovely, crunchy textural contrast to the marinade, with just the right amount of acid. Next we try the ‘Hyderabad ka murgh mussalam’, which are chicken pieces in a fragrant, spicy sauce and a couple of pieces of green chillies. This dish is marked as ‘hot’, which illustrates that they are dealing with a fair number of Anglo-Saxon palates, unaccustomed to real heat. We also try the vegetarian ‘Ranjit nagar se Palak paneer tadka’, English spinach cooked with cottage cheese and corn morsels. Now it’s of course possible that the corn is a local variation but I must admit I have never seen corn in this dish before. It’s excellent and looks good, too. The plain naan, obviously made to order, is very good, perfectly charred and to my palate a lot better with the food than rice. A combination of sides, yoghurt, mango chutney, assorted pickles and a tomato, cucumber and onion salad looks good and works well.
The food at Urban Tadka is good. It’s certainly a cut above your average Indian and if you disregard the flowery descriptions you are going to enjoy it.
Noise levels, I’m afraid are unbelievably high and the number of screaming kids would prevent me from ever wanting to go there again.
Score: 6.5/10
Noise: 98 db
Best dish: the naan
Comment: fix your wine list, cover the garbage bins, because the food is good.
Urban Tadka
321 Mona Vale Road
Terrey Hills NSW 2084