My New Mantra?

Will I return?

Where have all the North Indian restaurants gone too? When I was 13 to 24, there seemed to be a North Indian restaurant in every suburb. In Bangsar alone, there were two in Lucky Garden, one on the main Telawi strip. 

I cut my teeth on the lovely creamy tastes of the North, with what I now always associate as comfort food – boneless chunks of tender meat swimming in rich, vivid orange gravy; glops of green spinach pulverized with mint and spices, with cubes of paneer playing peek-a-boo. 

However, after the decade of The Bangles and Omar Khayyam on Jalan TAR when it used to be completely normal for a family to drive into the city for dinner; and then the decade of Pakeeza and D’Tandoor and for a while, Saffron in Hartamas, the curtain seemed to come down on this cuisine. Crown Princess lost its fine dining Northern Indian restaurant, D’Tandoor closed down.  There was nowhere to go for this kind of food! I have been so hard up I have eaten at the mamak for the taste of tandoor and naan! 

I had one so-so experience at Namaste in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, but the service was so bad that I never went back. 

I was really hard up when I saw Mantra in Sunway Pyramid. I did not really want such a huge meal. But how could I pass up a chance at some Northern comfort? 

Not quite the traditional Indian restaurant!

Mantra's interior.

I tell you, I was so so so hard pressed to keep my ordering to a minimum. It’s a pain to eat as a duo because you just cannot eat all that much. Not even if you have my pit of a stomach.

So I restrained myself and kept to the favourites. I was not very pleased that Mantra served both Western and NI cuisine. I mean, who wants to eat chicken stuffed with mozzarella at an Indian restaurant? 

I truly have bought into the idea that if you’re going to be a food expert, you should know what you’re talking about. Why review sea urchin if you’ve only eaten it once in your life? 

Mantra Platter.

So, I ordered things I knew and could judge from a semi-professional stand point. My starter (why on earth they were on a page headed TAPAS was beyond me!)was the Mantra Platter which is a combination of chicken malai tikka, tandoori salmon and tandoori leg of lamb. RM28.90 gave us overdone fish, tender chicken and gamey if passable soft lamb. Nothing outstanding, but I so missed the orange crust of tandoori anything, that it still seemed to be an old friend (an old friend who visits for too long and leaves talcum powder footprints on the stairs, but still worthy of some semblance of enthusiasm). 

It looks evil, but I love my palak paneer!

I just had to order the palak paneer. It was the first thing I looked for. To me, it’s the best way to eat spinach. It’s probably completely leeched of any vitamins, but oh, it is comfort and it is beautiful, in all its gloopy glory. If tandoori is an old friend, palak paneer is the lover you never quite gave up. It lacked a certain something, but for memory’s sake, it was worth ever sen of the RM15.90, even if ginger was slightly more present than I like it to be in the coriander, garlic and mustard oil blend. 

The rich and saucy butter chicken!

The RM18.90 butter chicken was tender, and orange and rich, just as I love it. Which was such a relief.  The plain briyani was served in a copper pot, and at RM8.90 was really delicious. Fluffy, rich, spice scented basmati was just a joy to eat and it could have been a meal in itself, so fragrant and wholesome, it was. 

Pots of flavour in this briyani!

Bread enough for a lot more than two!

My breads did not fare as well – possibly because there were just two of us and quite a bit of plain, butter, cheese and garlic naan, not to mention some other rotis. At RM16, it could have easily fed four. They were good breads, but they needed to be eaten quickly, before the air conditioning turned them into rubber mats. 

There was a list of cutesy mocktails, but I don’t think I wanted to load empty calories into my trunk, with the kind of food I had to go through already. So I just chuckled at Sun Of A Peach (peach nectar, pineapple juice, orange and a squeeze of lime, RM11.90) and Beach Blanked (not MY typo) Bingo (cranberry and grapefruit juice topped with club soda and ice cubes). 

The view from Mantra.

All things considered Mantra’s food is pretty good. I have issues with the Nasi Goreng on the menu, but I guess in the cut-throat mall food business, one has to offer as wide a breadth of food options. The plus point of the meal was that our table overlooked Sunway Lagoon, which just happened to be either closed or under maintenance. I rather enjoyed gazing down on all that still water after stuffing my maw with so much god stuff.