We’ve been alternating between Circa and unexciting local cafes within walking distance of work for the past 5 years, and so it was very cool for us to go to a completely different Western Sydney restaurant for a completely different kind of Western Sydney breakfast this past Monday morning after night shift.
We had a bit of an omakase cultural immersion experience, led by our Tamil friend and colleague, for whom Muthu Curry Restaurant has been a frequent haunt ever since his university days. That is, he picked, we ate. Read on to discover what little I understood of the delicious things we had.
We started with some fried foods from the hot fried food counter. I know not what these are – I can only relate them to what I know, which is to say that they were similar to spring rolls or egg rolls on the outside, but filled with potato and proteinaceous filling on the inside. Google tells me these are known as ‘short eats’ or ‘Chinese rolls’. I cannot independently verify.
The different fillings were all pretty similar, and we were able to sample some with fish, mutton, and pure vegetable. Were it not for the discrete chunk of meat in the mutton, I would have thought it identical to the ones without. They were fine. They were not bad. But they were so similar to each other that were it not an omakase experience needing to cater to several different levels of meat and non-meat eaters, I wouldn’t get a bunch of different ones.
We had two dosas that looked externally identical, and so only one photo is provided above. They were served with what was described to me as a selection of sambal, curry dip, and white curry.
Diving into dosa, the paneer dosa ($12.90) was excellent, with a mild creamy paneer filling, a light and slightly crispy pastry, and of course the three flavourings to eat the dosa with. It’s just incredible what they can accomplish in taste, size, and variety, for the price.
The keema dosa ($14.90) had some meat in it, which was fine, but really the paneer dosa is the one to get here. Given the meat was in chunks it was also harder to ensure that each mouthful had some filling, whereas the paneer was more homogeneous and spreadable.
We also had two plates of egg roti and curry. The first to be discussed is egg roti ($8) with lamb curry ($10) and dal. The egg roti was mild – egg sandwiched between layers of soft, non-crispy roti – and a perfect spongy vehicle to soak up both the dal and the curry sauce. The lamb was appropriately tender, non-gristly, though did not excite.
The same dish but with chicken curry ($9) was much more fruitily spicy and exciting, though I guess it was important to have both the flavours.
This is going to sound really uncultured but I prefer prana chai made in my kitchen to this masala chai ($3) that was probably made in the proper art and way.
Overall
We had a lot of food for just $16 per person for a group of five, and I enjoyed the meal overall, even though they didn’t have the kothu roti that I was originally keen on (they only start kothu roti around noon). I’d definitely come back, or otherwise go to a different local restaurant in the area.
Muthu Curry Restaurant
7/8 Portico Parade, Toongabbie NSW 2146
(02) 9688 5990
