Kings of Curry & Pride

My Saturday night didn’t really work out how I planned.
This being said, if it had, I wouldn’t be here, telling you about it, now would I?

Many moons ago, The BFF and I bought tickets to see Kings of Leon, which after much rescheduling, ended up taking place over the weekend.
Hey, don’t judge me, thou shall not stop liking a band just because they became popular, isn’t that how the song goes?
Annnyway, plans for these things is usually akin to: Get in car. Drive to concert. Watch concert. Sing along very badly to all the songs. Get in car. Go home.
In this particular instance, this is not how it worked out.
Last minute, some good friends got tickets also, further additions to The Plan were made.
Dinner, was now apart of The Plan.

So we found ourselves on William Street in Northbridge.

On Pride Parade night.
This wasn’t smart of us.

Every place we walked past was bursting at the seams.  Add to this, that in tow for the evening were my two fussy eater friends. It’s a tricky balancing act, where will seat us, with where will the boys eat?

We somehow ended up at Mela Indian Sweets & Eats. How we came to this decision, I’m not really sure. I may have been too busy oggling a very tall man (I think) in green and pink spandex. And a cape.
Despite our lack of reservation, we were very quickly seated at a long bench by the window so we could watch the parade forming.

All starving, deciding what we all wanted was a fairly painless task.
Garlic naan all round, a kadhai panneer for me, rogan josh for one of the boys,  and for everyone else, butter chicken.
“Really?” Came the incredulous look of the manager. “Butter chicken. I can’t get you to try something else?”
They would not be swayed, no matter how much good-natured ribbing the manager dished out.

I can’t honestly tell how long they took to bring out our meals, time was all a blur of fishnets, feather boas and leather chaps.
But before too long (I think), our table was laden with… Well, more butter chicken than you could poke a stick at, piles of hot garlic naan, and possibly the biggest samosas I’ve ever seen.

In a moment of uncharacteristic sensible ordering, I wound up with kadhai panneer. It’s a vegetarian dish, laden with capsicum and tofu, in a tomato based sauce, laced with cumin and coriander.
And pretty good, if you ask me. I’m not a huge fan of all things spicy, but it had the perfect amount of kick. No tears, no knocking back every liquid within reach.

I even managed to make it the entire way though dinner without wearing it. This might have had something to do with stealing all the napkins, and fashioning them into some kind of drop sheet bib, to save my new white shirt from it’s inevitable fate.

After the last of the sauce was mopped up with naan, and no more could be consumed, our full attention could be given to the growing parade outside. Which is probably a good thing.
Have you ever laughed so hard you’ve choked on curry? It’s much, much more painful that it sounds.

In the end, dinner was delicious.
Attentive, friendly service.
Quick food, well done.
What more could we ask for?
We could hardly argue with the view, could we?

I think we might have to do this again next year…