Curry Vault

18-20 Bank Place, Melbourne
03 9600 0144

Organising a team dinner is always difficult, especially when it’s a team with different personality and different tastes.  Pannacotta has the pleasure of organising our team dinner the other day and was stressing about where we should go.  We finally decided Indian and Pannacotta chose the curry vault.

Potato cakes and onion cakes

Our entree includes aloo tikki (potato cake) $7.8 and onion bhaji $7.8.  Deep fried stuff is always irresistible, and this entree is not an exception.  The potato cake is lightly spiced but lacks texture.  Onion Bhaji is very nice with the chickpea batter.  Both dish seemed slightly burnt though.

Our mains came.  The first two dishes are lamb Korma $19.90 and baingan masala (eggplant) $14.90.  The lamb curry was mild, some of the meat are tough but some are nicely cooked and gelatinous.  The eggplant is cooked in capsicum, it was tasty but slightly oily.

I love butter chicken $20.50- it’s soooo bad for you but it’s so good.  I was so tempted to follow DB’s lead to scoop the last of the gravey onto my dish and eat the last of the rice with it.  Palak paneer $15.90 is cheese cubes with a spinach sauce- yes so it looks like duck poo and some of us are too scared to eat it, but it’s actually very creamy and flavoursome.

Chilli Chicken $20.50 is not chilli at all, although my work friends liked it.  When I ordered I asked for extra chilli, but I was warned against it by the waitress, tell me it’s chilli enough.  Great intentions, but she really didn’t know how hot I can take it!  Fish tikka $14.90 is baked in the tandoor, the fish was cooked to perfection, however the fish is not fresh enough.  Although I must say, I’ve tried a few fishes in Indian places, and this is one of the freshest I had.

Glab jamun $6.80 is dumplings w/honey and rosewater syrup.  I don’t really know why it’s brownish/ purple-I didn’t actually eat any dessert (*gasp*).  Apparently it’s really yummie, I am not a sweet sweet fan so I am not very convinced.  Mango kulfi $6.80 is Mango indian icecream.  According to DB it tastes like those Weis bar.  Yummmm

Overall it was a good meal, more so because of the company than the food.  Somehow, an Indian place without Indians eating didn’t really sit well for me.  The good thing is that the dishes are not as oily and is more flavoursome than many other second-rated Indian restaurant, but it needs more spiciness and kick to its food.  5.5/10