The Bottom Line
Pros
- Ingredients taste fresher than the norm.
- Chef/owner Ben is kind, obliging and offers guests personalized service.
- Cooking is not saturated with sodium, allowing the choice to salt it up or not.
- Anything goes attire, from casual to business clothing.
- Reasonable prices.
Cons
- I'll let you know when I think of one.
Description
- Location:Montreal Curry House, formerly at 1433 Bishop, is NOW LOCATED at 1236 MacKay, just below Ste. Catherine.
- Get there: Guy-Concordia Metro
- Phone: (514) 845-0326
- Takeout service available.
Guide Review - La Maison de Cari/Curry House - A Montreal Restaurants Review
You'll never feel like a number at La Maison de Cari, better known as the Curry House, just footsteps away from Concordia University's main campus, in the heart of downtown Montreal. In operation 35 years and counting, chef/owner Ben is typically manning the restaurant with a smile.Persuaded by a weekly regular to give the Curry House a go, our evening's foursome started off with a mix of appetizers: seekh kebab, onion bhaji, samosas, chicken and lamb tikka. Delicious and faultless in their unassuming presentation, serving staff cleared the dishes with just enough breathing room for us to begin salivating for the main courses as we downed Cheetah beer, an Ontario lager specially brewed to complement Indian dishes. And the prelude, oven-warmed plates brought in by Ben himself, was a nice touch.
We opted for a series of meat dishes starting with chicken malai, a mildly spiced coconut milk based sauce slightly reminiscent of butter chicken but more often served with shrimp. Lamb methi was the red meat dish of choice, bathing in a medium-hot reddish brown sauce. I insisted on chicken kashmiri, a personal creamy favorite of mine served with raisins and almonds (even litchi in this case). The Curry House addict of our group recommended the vegetable bhaji, a show stopper of some of the freshest vegetables I've had in a Montreal Indian restaurant.
All in all, the meats were tender and the sauces conservatively spiced, in the sense that Ben let the freshness of the ingredients come through in the mild-to-spicy sauces, instead of counting on excessive cumin to hide any flaws. Also, the rice was good and the naan, even better.
Finishing off with gulab jamun ("rose plums") and the best mango I've tasted in town, imported from Haiti, the critic in me is at a loss in finding a weak point. Thank you Ben!
