First Visit - Tamarind Bistro

We ate at the Tamarind Bistro (1626 West Broadway, 604-733-5335, at the time of this writing, the phone number is missing from the website, please fix!) on Friday as a belated birthday dinner for myself (lucky me!).

This newly opened restaurant (it's about a month old) has hit the ground running. Since the restaurant is owned and operated by the family that owns Rubina Tandoori, the food is of the same high quality.

Tamarind is one of our favourite flavours and it is featured throughout the entire Tamarind Bistro menu. Its unique, complex sour flavour is excellent in drinks and sweet and savoury food.

We enjoyed all the dishes we tried especially the ones that had tamarind. The Tamarin'tini ($6) was excellent: tamarind juice with vodka, combined with honey and paprika. It was wonderfully sour, sweet and peppery all at the same time.

Our first starter was the Mumtaz Salad ($7): chickpeas, peanuts, almonds, potatoes with wild greens and a tamarind dressing. Again delicious and this time also spicy. Perhaps this would be too spicy for most, but as chili fans, we loved the chili and tamarind one two punch.

We then tried the Mango Almond Scallops ($11). I didn't taste the almond but I loved the fact that they were served on lime slices and the combination of lime and the mango and the scallop was delicious. The sauce was so tasty we mopped as much of it that we could with the accompanying naan.

For our mains we had the Jaipuri Vegetables ($9): cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and other vegetables in a light fenugreek spiced curry. A nice counterpoint to the lamb that we had next.

The Pondicheery Lamb Chops ($17) were done in a tamarind mint curry. The curry was fantastic and this sauce and the other sauces made us order an extra naan.

Together with a lemon ginger drink, mango kulfi (great on a hot day!) and a chai, the total was about $57 before tip.

Not cheap, but not too expensive either. Recommended especially if you love tamarind like we do!

Our cover was blown after the starters were delivered so we got some special treatment, but the service before that was friendly and swift and the food which is the most important thing to us was delicious even before they found out that we have a food website.

We'll be back for a full mini-review.