Palki
Where: 56 Lilian Ngoyi (Windermere) Road
Open: Daily 11.30am to 3pm, 5pm to 9pm
Call: 031 201 0194
Order: ubereats.com
Restaurants are going to need our support. If we want them to be there for us when the good times roll again and restrictions are lifted, and we can socialise and party with friends and family, we need to help them get through these tough times.
So support your neighbourhood local. Many will be offering deliveries through Uber Eats or Mr D, or simply using their waiting staff, who now no longer have an income, to do deliveries ‒ and please remember to tip generously.
Before Uncle Cyril’s big pep talk on Sunday, we enjoyed lunch at Palki, now nestled in a little old house at the bottom of Lilian Ngoyi (Windermere) Road. The decor is fairly basic but it’s comfortable. We sat downstairs where we could be our own little isolating group. Service is friendly and owner driven.
The menu is vast ‒ taking in the whole gamut of North and South Indian cuisine, with a sizeable Indo Chinese menu as well. It would take some doing to eat your way through it. But today we’d come to try their crab.
We started with street food. A good aloo paratha (R53) which came with a decent chilli dipping sauce and onion pakoda (R35) ‒ crispy onion chilli bites, which always go down well. You can also have them with potato, brinjal or paneer. On a recent visit with a vegan, he really enjoyed the crisp, fresh potato samoosas and the Manchurian mushrooms, and was impressed by the substantial vegetarian offering.
Then came the crispy chilli chicken (R108), a dish of the Indo-Chinese menu. This was chicken dusted in flour and crisped before being coated in a mild but spicy, sticky sauce. It’s something our hostess insisted we try and I am glad we did because it’s not something I would normally order.
For mains we shared lamb rogan josh, one of the classics of north India (R128), which was requested mild, and had beautiful flavour. Then there were the Madras masala prawns (R150) in a spicy tamarind-based sauce. These were very good.
The Chettinad crab (R142) was a generous portion with lots of meaty crab pieces and it was fun being tearing them apart and making a delightful mess at the table. The sauce was hot but complemented the crab well. Good cooking. We were satisfied. In fact we were more than satisfied. But those memories will have to last until the boss opens things up again.
It was all helped down with a bread basket (R131) taking in a selection of their breads and two large potato dosas ‒ the famed super thin and crispy rice pancakes of South India.
Desserts, which include sweet and salt and mango lassi, bombay crush, kulfi ice-cream and gulab jamun, and something called a Bunny Hug, were never going to get a look in after all that food, but are worth trying.
Food: 4
Service: 3½
Ambience: 3
The Independent on Saturday