Vagya, a Nepalese and Indian restaurant in the Sunnybank Hotel on Botanic Road, is as hidden as gems get
I’M NOT A curry lover. I might be if I lived in London, where it is a badge of honour to have a secret knowledge of your neighbourhood’s best curry house. But I’ve had too many bad Dublin curries: cartons of brown sludge with questionable meat stewed in fat, salt and spice, with a side of tooth-cracking reheated rice.
The Irish curry scene divides, with some honourable exceptions, into two experiences. There are the impressive restaurants such as Rasam, Kinara Kitchen and Jaipur, where good Indian cooking can be found. And there are the cheaper takeaways, where expectations are as low as the prices.
So when friends raved about a great curry house on Dublin’s Botanic Road I was interested. “Wear elastic trousers,” were the parting words from one when I rang to check the name. Vagya is a Nepalese and Indian restaurant in the Sunnybank Hotel, which is an old-fashioned flowery-carpet hotel in which I imagine travelling salesmen unpacking their battered leather suitcases back in the day. The sign outside is barely legible, written in an abstract graphic script. In the hotel car park it’s sardine-can tight and full of unfriendly signs threatening a post-dinner clamping experience. This is as hidden as gems get.
The hostility dissolves inside the restaurant. The dining room is in two interconnecting rooms of this old house, the marble fireplaces have been boarded up and everything is painted sunny yellow. The tablecloths are covered in white paper cloths to catch the spills. There are nice wine glasses and the service is very friendly.
Western versions of Indian food come with heavy ingredients, such as clarified butter, cream and large chunks of meat – the “tikka masala” school of cooking. In 2009 a British MP tabled a motion proposing Glasgow as the EU-protected originator of the tikka masala. It is widely accepted to be a British curry house invention concocted to appeal to a western palate. It contains none of the simple Indian and Nepalese diet staples of lentils, rice and curried vegetables.
In Vagya, the menu has a mix of Nepalese dishes along with the more familiar Indian food we know. All of it is relatively cheap (there’s a €12.90 early bird three-course meal option).
Momo are Nepalese dumplings. By the power of Google I can tell you that in Nepal, momo would traditionally be filled with minced buffalo meat. Here they are filled with minced chicken and served in a generous portion, each topped with a fresh coriander leaf, a tangle of raw carrot that’s been turned into stringy salad, and a piquant dipping sauce. They’re rubbery and tasty.
A tandoori prawn starter is another good portion of blousy tiger prawns, flesh softened by being marinated in yoghurt and lemon juice and then cooked to a tail-singed crisp in a tandoori oven. A third starter of aloo tikki are golden fried spiced potato cakes with a swirl of tamarind and tomato chutney.
The main courses come in generous heavy white bowls. We’ve gone for two lamb dishes: a gorkhali curry and a lamb mint curry. Both are good variations on a theme, with mild tomato-based sauces.
A chole chana is a delicious chickpea stew. It is the standout dish of the night and better than its meatier counterparts, with a lightness to it that allows the flavours of the fresh ingredients to work well. We get three stainless steel bowls of lemon, boiled and pilau rice.
Desserts are the typical freezer fare: a nice toffee cake and a dome of kulfi or pistachio ice cream. Two glasses of house sauvignon blanc and a non-alcoholic beer, with a mint tea to finish, round it all off.
It’s also BYOB, with a corkage of €4.99 for a bottle of wine and €7.99 for sparkling wine or champagne. Given that bonus, Vagya creates a good restaurant experience at takeaway prices. Along with Dublin’s most forbidding car park, it’s a good reason to leave the car at home. Dinner for three with drinks came to €95.90.
Fiver suppers in a busy bee hive
A cross-section of the building housing Odessa Restaurant and Club would probably look like a busy bee hive. From the curtained and low-lit basement to the rooftop terrace, there is floor after floor of activity from cinema clubs to birthday bashes to corporate dos. The club floors are now open as a general bar space and the restaurant menu, with its handy “fiver plates”, is served in these clubby rooms. I arrived early one night for a book club gathering and found myself in a little corner of heaven, a deep comfortable Chesterfield couch by an open window with the last of the Indian summer breeze blowing through.
I had a small bowl of hearty chorizo and chickpea red-wine stew and a pint of Guinness while I read my book. Bliss.
It’s a place that shows you the comfort of a gentleman’s club, though the clientele is predominantly women these days. And the fiver plates are a great way to eat when you haven’t the time or budget for a full restaurant meal. They’re the kind of supper you might make at home if you had the time, ingredients in the fridge and the head space to think about and execute it.
The wider menu is also available here and there’s a mixture of couches and tables and chairs if you want to turn it into a proper dinner. My fiver supper and pint came to €9.50.
Odessa Club, 13-14 Dame Court, Dublin 2, tel: 01-6707634
