The intoxicating fragrance of curry leaves hits you as you enter this establishment (now open again after a kitchen fire). My intention is to go beyond the everyday curries found in Durban kitchens but as my eyes move down the menu they stop at a bog standard. Memories of La Mercy Beach’s Seabelle* and its legendary prawn curry come flooding back.
With its disco balls and tables set on a dance floor, this North Coast anthem to kitsch was very old South Africa, albeit one of the few Indian-owned restaurants permitted on a prime beachfront site. Big white sugarcane farmers would sit at the bar nursing drinks until way after lunchtime, only taking their tables by mid-afternoon. Once in those Apartheid days it was the site of a ferocious gun battle between a white cricket team and Indian staff. People died.
But in those charged days of the 80’s, punctuated by unspeakable violence, the moments of bliss in between were all the more delightful. Indeed there was no better way to spend a sunny summer day than driving north, the verdant coastline to your right, sucking in the thick air in anticipation of the Seabelle’s sweet coral-pink crawlies and Black Label.
In more genteel surroundings at the Bukhara branch in central Cape Town, the prawns are okay, the gravy rich and the curry leaves are there but it is a bit short of the one essential ingredient of a Durban shellfish curry: chilli. It should make you sweat uncomfortably though stop short of the eye-popping assault of a Chatsworth auntie’s crab curry.
Despite this criticism, Bukhara may have made the right call: offending the sensibilities of Capetonians and foreigners may send them screaming all the way back to Newlands and Frankfurt (though a lamb rogan josh devoured previously here had plenty of heat).
Earlier we eagerly try and order more exotic tastes off the Indian Street Food section of the menu but they are only available at the bar. The waitron apologises profusely that they have failed to remove the dishes from the menu.
The Murg Hara Masala my girlfriend orders is an unappetizing HP Sauce brown but beauty is skin deep. Unfortunately not in this case. The dhania and mint is overpowering. But the buttery naan bread is a fluffy beaut. And the Jack Black on tap is the perfect way to chase curry down.
Plenty vegetarian starters and mains, many with paneer (non-aged plain cheese) and spinach, are available. Members of the Vegetarian Society can add this spot to their list.
* Seabelle was founded in 1971 by market gardeners Seenavassan and Kanniamma Govender next to their farmhouse in South Beach Road. When last visited several years ago it had slipped but according to a globetrotting recent visitor it is back to its best.
Tom Robbins
November 4, 2009
Bukhara
+27 (0)21 424 0000
Email: information@bukhara.com
www.bukhara.com
33 Church St
CBD
Cape Town
Tags: Apartheid, Bukhara, Cape Town, Chatsworth, chilli, crab curry, curry, curry leaves, dhania, Durban kitchens, Indian Street Food, Jack Black, Kanniamma Govender, La Mercy, mint, Murg Hara Masala, naan, North Coast, paneer, prawn curry, restaurant, rogan josh, Seabelle, Seenavassan Govender, Vegetarian Society
