Rita's - Southall

For one reason or other SM and I found ourselves in the Southall area a Saturday evening a few weeks ago. Having only ventured down that way a couple of times before, our instinct had us stick to the high street and so into Rita's we went. I had been to Rita's once on my last visit to Southall when in the middle our big shop for shawls and bangles my friend (and fellow food lover) RK developed a sudden craving for felooda. I was blown away by how delicious felooda was. Truth be told I had never heard of it until RK ordered it and even if that particular version was terrible I would have been none the wiser. But I did remember Rita's.

We started with a lamb samosa, an onion bhaji (onion fritter) and gobi pakora (deep fried pieces of cauliflower in a batter made with gram flour) served with tamarind sauce. The starters were passable. Nothing less, nothing more.

I insisted on ordering the butter chicken. I've been obsessed with finding my idea of the perfect butter chicken and I have so far failed in my mission. I'm usually on a palak/saag paneer (spinach cooked with chunks of cheese curds) mission too but I decided to give it a rest that day. Rita's butter chicken was edible - sizeable boneless chicken breast pieces, thick creamy sauce. Better than some but still lacking something ... a depth to the dish I keep looking for.

The lamb masala was, on the other hand, really quite good. The meat (hidden deep in the sauce in the photo) was incredibly tender and full of flavour. It had obviously been cooked in the sauce for a long time. The sauce itself was very nice. Nice flavours and not too much of a chili kick.

Our carbs for the evening included a very sad and very flat puri. It had obviously been cooked sometime before it was served to us and it just slowly deflated as it lay somewhere waiting to be ordered. An absolute failure of a puri.

SM is obsessed with any dish that has "garlic" as part of its name. Garlic naan was definitely a "must have".

The pea pilau was just a step better than the puri. Pilau rice with some peas thrown in. It was too oily and though I would personally just have plain boiled rice, SM is fond of flavoured carbs so flavoured rice it was.

Rita's Restaurant
112-114 The Broadway, Southall, Middlesex UB1 1QF

There's Always Room for Mamak!

No trip home would be remotely complete without at least a plate of Maggi goreng. Curly wurly pre-boiled instant noodles fried with an assortment of shredded veg, tofu,egg and flavoured with that powdered magic that comes with the noodles in a little sachet - usually curry flavour. Drenched in limau kasturi. Just the way I love it.

To be honest, the brunch meeting with NH and WMF wasn't supposed to be about Maggi goreng. It was supposed to be about rotis from Nirwana but predictably tardy Justine was .. well, late. NH and WMF had already polished off their rotis by the time I arrived and Nirwana had switched over to their lunch menu - no rotis but everything else got la ... Hoping to track down a couple of rotis, we headed to Pelita up the road but no such luck. All the Mamak-isq places had stopped serving rotis for the daylight hours for that day. Not that I minded, I was quite happy with my noodles (they even topped it with shredded lettuce! :) Bangsar, eh?)

NH and WMF decided to share a cheese naan served with dhal, some sort of curry sauce and an ultra green mint sauce. I have no idea why naan is still served out of roti hours. Maybe because there's tandoori chicken on the menu? Naan and tandoori chicken seem to always go hand in hand. I wonder if this is always the case ... something to do with cooking naan bread in the tandoor, maybe?

A little poke around the cooked food counter and I returned armed with a deep fried chicken drumstick. I love the batter they use at these places - I think it's the fresh turmeric they add. The best deep fried chicken used to be from a run down stall by an outdoor parking lot on Jalan Perak in downtown KL. It's gone now - it made way for some building or other. I still miss that chicken. More often than not the pieces of chicken came fresh out of the hot oil. Crisp and juicy - utterly beautiful. My piece from Pelita was a little cold and the batter had gone a bit hard but will have to do for now.

I also chose a gigantic deep fried squid but unlike the chicken, the man didn't hand it to me straight away. He shoo-ed me away and told me he'll deliver it to my table. Ten minutes later and I was beginning t wonder where my squid had gone off to when it finally arrived - utterly transformed. It had obviously been sent back to the kitchen where it was re-battered and re-fried with curry leaves and shallots. Oh, it was so much better than I had dared hoped. Yes, the squid was slightly rubbery but the batter was so good that we promptly forgot about the rubbery-ness. It was hot,crunchy and fragrant - very nicely done.

A few days later and it was a breakfast date with VO and TL at Devi's Corner. I'm not quite sure I like this "new" location at the corner of Jalan Telawi 2 and Jalan Telawi 4. It's a little claustrophobic and I'm never quite comfortable when I'm there. VO ordered a roti pisang - normal roti stuffed with sliced/mashed (?) banana and served as usual with dhal and some sort of curry.

I had a hankering for roti stuffed with aloo marsala but couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called so I ended with with rawa thosai. This was definitely not what I wanted but it was good and I love coconut chutney but I was still wanted my roti stuffed with potatoes!

By a simple process of elimination, we finally worked out what I was looking for - marsala thosai! I got more of my favourite coconut chutney, a spiced version, dhal and a curry of sorts. Happiness!

Nasi Kandar Pelita
2 Jalan Telawi 5, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur

Devi's Corner
14 Jalan Telawi 4, Bangsar Baru, 59100 Kuala Lumpur