She hides because
she don't know nothing
don't know nothing anymore
She keeps a funny face
it's locked and bagged
it's just outside the door
Another Tuesday... another Taste! Kind of an odd review this week as the experience itself was severely unbalanced. Sigh... this is not going to be easy.
If you haven't heard of them, Mehfill is an Ontario mini-chain of Indian restaurants with about half a dozen locations, many in the outer reaches of the GTA (Oakville, Whitby etc). They opened a location near me just under two years ago, taking over the space of what I think was a perpetually empty Vietnamese restaurant (edit: it was the Green Basil, which previously lasted at the location for at least 15 years so... glad I looked into that).
I'd passed by this new Mehfill spot many times and had always been curious to finally go in (especially once discovering they were a chain and could review them for a Tuesday episode). This curiousity was later accelerated by a local close friend who lived in India for a time singing their praises, and by randomly working a shift at BMO Field with an agency staff worker who likewise vouched for their delicious authenticity. That same local friend wanted to treat me to a belated birthday meal (thank you again) and this indeed felt like the perfect opportunity to try the much lauded Mehfill.
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Okay... so I've been deliberating whether or not to start with the very notable negatives or the high thumbs up positives of this whole thing. I'm going to start with the negatives because they have nothing to do with the food itself, and so if you want to avoid all that and get into my thoughts on the grub itself (maaaybe the wrong word to use there) skip to this timecod-I-mean-skip to when the next picture appears in the article. Got it? Okay good... because this is about to get unpleasant.
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Look, I work in the service industry and have for... ummm lets not talk about it (I'm stupid fortunate to actually really like the jobs I have for the record). People have off-days, I certainly do... and telling this story to a friend later (who works wine retail not bars, but similar enough service-wise) he mused that "perhaps they were called in, it's a job they don't like anyway and just didn't want to be there that day".
This is my runabout way of saying: the server was awful. Pains me to say it, as somebody who has done the same job in the past, but I'm not writing these reviews to lie to ya. Fib, maybe. Anyhow she was just completely disinterested in paying my friend and I any attention, which is especially glaring when there is only one other table occupied in the entire restaurant. Was she also the manager, perhaps preoccupied with administrative duties on a slower night? I doubt it... peeking over, there was a lot of standing behind the bar idly. To the point my normally patient friend (he's a teacher so considerable patience is a prerequisite) had to wave several times to get her attention. It's also a small, bright, open restaurant with a very simple seating plan. Not great.
We were ready to order food for at least twenty minutes, with empty beers may I add... in a restaurant with one other occupied table. Fine whatever. Or obtusely saying she wanted to start cleaning so "hurry up and leave"... fifty minutes before the restaurant actually closes. Ugh. This insults me as an industry veteran. Never ever ever ever do that. It's so passive aggressively rude... the correct way (if you're trying to nudge people out of your empty restaurant near closing) is to politely ask if they're doing okay and (most crucially) if they're ready for the bill.. which she didn't even ask! My friend still had to go up to the counter to get it. Absolutely abmysmal service.
So that was bad. Arguably worse... my trip to the bathroom halfway through the meal. Saw a cockroach. Yeeeeeeah. Occasionally in my teenage years I spent time in houses/apartments with roaches and lemme tell ya... few things make me lose my appetite quicker. I can't stand them. Spiders? Millipedes? Well spiders are our friends (I throw them out the door should they come close) and millipedes are sorta weird but that's just ground-level living life. Cockroaches? I retch. The smell of one being roasted in a toaster once when I was fifteen and ohgodwhydidI just remember THAT memory? What... the... fuck. Every crunchy bite I took of my food afterward was full of uneasy suspicion... like "what was that?" Ugh. Anxiety central.
So yeah. Review over. This place was horrible, it was frustrating and revolting don't ever go...
...except not quite.
Hey you're still here! Glad you stuck it through (or avoided the last few paragraphs) because honestly, I wouldn't have even bothered with that "skip ahead" shtick if the food wasn't worth something. Even if it was just 'meh' this would be a very different kind of review. Or if the owners/franchisees weren't genuinely generous and good people.
So lets get into this already! Here is the garlic naan (as always, you had me at garlic) and it is excellent. The bread is lightly fried and not overtly oily either, with tiny bits of garlic all about. It pulls apart fantastically, is soft with an edge of crispyness... hell two days later when I discovered one piece as a leftover in my fridge (sealed obviously)... after a trip to the toaster oven it was still quite soft and delicious. This was... frankly magical in its freshness and precision.
My friend ordered the butter chicken (his consistent "go-to" as he likes to say) and one thing I really like about Indian restaurants (among many other worldwide cuisines) is the easy shareability. Especially in larger groups ("just order a bit of everything and pass it around!") but even just a couple folks you can trade a tablespoon/plop (I prefer "plop") of each other's dish onto your own plate before you chow down.
As such I got a sample of this butter chicken. It's... very nice. Rich, creamy, the chicken parts are in fairly large cube-chunks but are also tender and juicy throughout... amazing consistency. Definitely more creamy than other butter chicken dishes I've had (you can see in the photo there's a little extra circular squirt of something white and please I know what you're thinking... that might be actually true for my next dish should they ever read this review).
Jokes aside, even in the spoonful I sampled I could immediately tell this was some damn fine butter chicken. Depth of flavours, chicken texture exceptional, and a sneaky spice that made my friend profusely sweat. I can't pin it flavour-wise, the heat was very throughout but so in the background of the other flavours. A real creeper, and not stupid-spicy but noticeable.
Anytime I see lamb on a menu I tend to go for it. I love chicken: it's genuinely the one meat I miss the most during my occasional forays into vegetarianism. But I can also cook chicken at home and the taste of chicken itself... well how you cook it and how you season it can only go so far, it's what you surround it with that makes it something very special. Conversely, I have never cooked lamb and wouldn't even know where to start.
This is Mehfill's straight up "lamb curry", a description that upon ordering it elicits both wondrous curiousity and potential misfortune. A curry can be anything after all, and so I approached this like their "house lamb curry signature" in a way... completely unsure what to expect.
The result: quite a medley of flavours. Lots of onion, a hint of ginger at times (jumps out as a certain spruce), good hearty spice, the sauce itself full of a thick dark tomato-like consistency... a very muted tomato presence that is within a symphony of peppers and spices. Just an excellent curry sauce, thick enough to droop off a spoon but not thin to the point of being watery. Remarkably tasty.
I got a sense of heavy slow cooked onions in there, and some ginger (certain scoops especially... there are shreds of ginger), and some cumin or caraway seeds within the mix to add a little incidental 'poof' to the herbal palate. Did I just use the word palate? Ugh... I really am a food reviewer, aren't I...
Regardless, it is an excellent curry... the depth of taste and flavour and spice (not super hot) is there. The lamb? I tend (see what I did there) to go for lamb often for that specific tenderness. Certain cuts of beef can match it, if well done, but lamb has it's own distinct feel and texture. Can't really explain it, but when it's done right it is magical... and it is magical here. Incredibly tasty, no chewy bits at all, that perfect zone of 'enjoyable in the mouth that lasts'... and lamb for me has always had a slightly black pepper aftertaste and it is also here. One of these days I'll explain why I like lamb so much... maybe on a pizza? (weirdly no pizza place offers lamb as a topping). One of these days...
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Overall. Man... the food was indeed marvelous and thank you again my friend for treating me (I appreciate it I swear!)... but if you read the middle section of this piece you know how I feel about this. For the record, that little vermin wasn't actually in the bathroom... it was on our table. Yeah, pretty close to my right hand.
Such an awkward situation when a good friend is taking you out to a restaurant and you see that. I tried flicking it away, hoping it was a hallucination brought upon by the zero drugs I was taking... nope. It messes up a meal (and ironically, my buddy was telling tales of his time in India where he'd have to pick bugs out of his lunch).
Perhaps I have a queasy stomach for this kind of stuff but no! I do not recommend Mehfill... if you're dining inside I mean. And the terrible terrible server who wishes you'd disappear. Awful shit. Do not do that at the Beaches location.
However... if you get something to go? I'd suggest that because the food is legit very good. Or check out a location without bad service and roach PTDS in your mind to fuck things up. This Beaches one? Get it delivered.
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Tuesday Tune
They played my work two weeks ago... and didn't play this song? Goddamn it's so good.
That's it for this week! Thanks for reading my (apparently outdated) blog... hey it's actual the words that matter I hope. Until next time you tune into this telegram... stay safe, stay well, and don't spill that mustard.
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