Kali
Where: 15 Chartwell Drive, uMhlanga
Open: Tuesday to Sunday lunch and dinner
Call: 063 665 3099
Food writer Ingrid Shevlin and I were tempted this week by “tantric tapas”, the offerings of uMhlanga’s latest restaurant Kali which opened a few weeks ago.
The venture of Kim and Pashi Reddy of My Kitchen Rules fame, who were also instrumental behind the Food Box in Morningside, it offers an array of interesting flavours, from India, South East Asia and China.
It’s a smart restaurant with a large bar down the one side and an interesting cocktail menu. Painted out in black with large, backlit wallpaper panels taking in some obscure subjects, the decor is certainly dramatic. The chairs in blue and gold look inviting but are not terribly comfortable.
Ingrid and I wonder about the choice of name. Kali is afterall the Hindu Goddess of Death, often depicted with her tongue out, raising a bloodied weapon with a necklace of skulls from all the demons she has slain. It also means black in Hindi.
The menu looks expansive but much of it is a selection of tasting menus that incorporate items off the a la carte menu. And then I winced. A six-course tasting menu comes in at R1000 - with no attempt to soften the blow with a feel better R995. The four-course seafood menu sets you back R750, the regular four-course option is R650 and even the veg option is R500.
Ouch!
It’s this absurd pricing that is the reason Durban diners have such a scratchy relationship with tapas restaurants.
While it’s a style I’ve always enjoyed, relishing the multitude of different flavours on offer without ending up feeling stuffed, Durban likes hearty plates and a perceived sense of value for money.
I know small plates of food are proportionately more expensive – requiring more prep and time in the kitchen, and ingredients, and I am prepared to pay a premium, but I still want value for money.
We started with the royal pani puri (R45 each), a scrumptious mouthful of super crisp puri stuffed with yellow fin tuna, sesame, wasabi and caviar into which we poured a lovely tart ginger pani. Delicious.
This was Bombay street food on steroids. There’s a more traditional version here with a potato curry.
We also tried the nori papadums – an interesting concept using seaweed in a papadum mixture to create little “toasts” so to speak.
These were topped with salmon tartare, sriracha mayo, sesame, ginger, chilli and coriander (R80 each).
There is also a beef option that takes in lemon and basil. We enjoyed these, the chilli having quite a kick.
Then there was the prawn betel leaf (R90 each), a tempura fried betel leaf topped with poached butter prawn, masala cream, tamarind and green chutney.
Again the flavours were inspired. Other tapas, which can either be ordered individually or in sets of three, might include beef katsu on brioche, umami glaze with pickled cabbage and cumin aioli, or masala rubbed lamb with honey glaze, roti taco, sambal, guacamole and lime.
There’s a small dim sum menu that includes duck, kimchi, beef or Hong Kong prawn dumplings.
There is a collection of more substantial plates.
Ingrid fancied the duck bao bun with hoisin, gochujang, cucumber, peanuts and relish (R130) which was beautifully presented in a dish which had dry ice around it giving it that misty ethereal quality.
It was a lovely dish of crispy duck with all the traditional Chinese accompaniments and certainly presented the best value of the day.
I toyed with the idea of the smoked butter masala which could be done with chicken, prawns or paneer, until I realised it was basically butter chicken.
The grilled lamb with harissa, dukkah and charred lemon looked interesting, as did the black pepper crab, which was orange crab meat tossed with soy, oyster sauce, curry leaf and crushed black pepper… That’s until I saw the R320 price tag.
I opted for the kale reef (R225) which was essentially a Thai inspired beach garden salad with beautifully crisp tempura kale, salad greens, red chilli, Thai dressing, shrimp fry, prawns, sesame seeds and nori sprinkle.
I love crispy spinach and the salad had a good hit of chilli, but the dish didn’t need the shrimp fry which was some sort of mayo based cocktail piled on top. It did need more than four prawns.
Chef Owen came out to enquire whether we had enjoyed our meals, which we certainly had. He knows his way around the kitchen.
There are three dessert options. Kulfi on a stick, and chargrilled kashmiri rubbed pineapple with rum infused honey and sweetened coconut cream. Perhaps we should have tried that.
Instead we shared the celebration of corn (R110) which was simply a bland mess that we didn’t know quite what to make of it.
This was broken up mealie cake infused with cumin (no evidence of it) served with sweet corn ice-cream (it just tasted sweet), popcorn in burnt caramel (which was delicious when you could find some, most of the caramel ending up under the little dish that held the ice-cream) and thyme infused soil (I got one hit of it midway through).
Maybe it was one of those dishes that sounded better on paper.
Later that evening I was caught by loadshedding, and ordered in a tandoori chicken and naan breads from a local favourite. It occurred to me that all that food, more than enough for two people, came to a fifth of the cost. And that’s after Uber Eats have taken their absurdly large cut of the action.
Food: 3 ½
Service: 3
Ambience: 3 ½
The Bill: R1 125 with one soft drink each
The Independent on Saturday