We loved our late night dining experience at the Black Sheep Black Series
last time around at Belon, and so when the restaurant group did it again offering set menus at special price in all of their restaurants, we decided to check out New Punjab Club on Wyndham Street. It’s a restaurant we heard a lot of good words about but never got around to visit, so this promotion just worked out perfectly for us.
With our booking at 9:30pm, we began with pre-dinner snacks and drinks
nearby before making our way over to the restaurant just down the street. The place was packed with people when we arrived – it’s not the most comfortable place to sit down with tables being very close together in a rather tight space but it’s fun with funky decoration and interesting choice of music on their playlist. I know absolutely nothing about Punjabi food – in fact I can’t even point out where Punjab is on a map (it's somewhere near to India-Pakistan border) – so I was glad that the menu included all of their signature dishes, saving me the trouble having to study the menu and pick the dishes cluelessly.
They began bringing the food over soon after we were seated and all the dishes were served family style in the middle of our table. After a plate of Pani Puri as our amuse-bouche, first to arrive was the Samosa Chaat. In a deep dish was smashed samosas smothered with taramind glaze, yogurt, and pomegranate. It’s a colorful dish with a lot of flavors that went in (sweet, spicy with some acidity), unlike the conventional samosas that I was (slightly) more familiar with.
I was told the Keema Pau is the must-have dish at the restaurant and I understood why after one bite. The shredded mutton was cooked to fell-off-the-bone tender and topped with deep-fried potatoes – that was to be eaten with the halved milk bun served on the side like a little open-faced slider. The meat was mildly gamey but loaded with spices and I love the buttery and soft buns that’s like a brioche with added butter. I felt I could eat 5 of those in a meal.
Mogewala Paneer was another dish I love. The soft creamy cheese was cut into big cubes and cooked in the tandoori oven, and served with corn raita and beet kachumbar salad. I like the smoky flavor from the cooking with the charred crust which contrast well with the mildly (and uniquely) flavored Indian cheese. And I also love the couple “breads” that were served with the dishes, which included the butter naan and mattar kulcha, both were delivered to our table hot and fresh off the oven and worked well with the food.
The other meat dishes, which included the fish dish they comped us, were spot on and on par of our expectation with interesting tastes. All the dishes were not as spicy as I thought it would be, with the exception of the palak mushroom matter, which was a vegetables stew with spinach, mushroom and green peas. It did come with a good kick, which I thought went well with the naan.
These are not the dishes we were used to at local Indian restaurants, but the food was tasty, service was wonderful and we would definitely want to come back for more in the future.
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