Xuzhou lightens up on classic cuisine

Meat me

For the main course, we skipped the rice and ordered roti (whole-wheat flat bread) with daal, a creamy pureed spinach curry with diced homemade cottage cheese and mutton curry - an unusually light and tasty preparation of succulent pieces of mutton cooked in gravy of turmeric, cumin, coriander, onion, tomato and lightly flavored green chili. I ordered a chicken chow-chow - a sphagetti-like noodle dish with tasty shredded chicken (or beef) and vegetables.

For vegetarians, the plentiful options range from simple, lightly spiced potato curries to lentils and from the good old eggplant and cauliflower to a variety of mushrooms - all cooked in either Nepalese, Chinese or Indian style or a combination of all three.

Chicken ruled the meat section with a special dish of bhanta chicken, which was a very new kind of combination of eggplant and chicken cooked in spicy yellow curry. The tarkari that we ate was also served with chicken pieces substituting for the expected diced cottage cheese cubes. The beef meatball showed a Western influence, while the chili fish was authenticly Nepalese.

The restaurant also offers set meals at very reasonable price: Chicken kurma with rice (minced chicken curry), chicken chili rice and also mushroom curry rice. All the meals come with a soft drink of choice.

For dessert, I would have preferred sikarni, a fruit-based yogurt that is very typical of Nepal. But it was absent on the menu, so we settled for some fruit fritters - banana and apple - deep-fried and drizzled with honey.

IF YOU GO

Nizang-Himalaya

500 Dongchang Lu (Road) (near Pudong Nanlu), Pudong district, Shanghai.

021-5877-2262.

Average cost per person: 300 yuan ($48).

Recommended dishes: Chili Chicken, Mutton Curry, Pureed Spinach Curry with Cottage Cheese.

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