City Road, Cardiff. 029 2049 2344 / www.mirchicardiff.com
Food: ***** Atmosphere: ****
Mirchi is an Indian Pakistani restaurant based in Cardiff’s multicultural food district, City Road. It’s a remnant of a culture now past, with devastatingly tasty results. Nestled around the middle of City Road, Mirchi specialise in what they call Indo-Pak cuisine – and they won best Indo-Pak restaurant at the Wales restaurant awards, so they’re doing something right. Specifically, providing quality and authenticity in a market geared towards toning down chilli and spice.
To start off, we had some complimentary poppadoms while choosing from the menu. The decor is tastefully decorated with traditional Panjabi wood carvings and tuk-tuks. You’d be hard pushed to find a more diverse clientele, and people travel from afar to come to Mirchi. In many ways, it’s one of Cardiff’s best kept secrets.
We settled on the chicken shashlik between two of us as a starter – a Pakistani sizzling chicken dish with onions, chillis and garlic – and a portion of onion pakoras. For our main we had the delicious saag paneer with a portion of chickpea biriyani, which is incredibly difficult to find in this city. Unlike most places, Mirchi make all their biriyani dishes fresh to order with a surprisingly wide selection for vegetarians across the menu, despite the stereotype of Pakistani food being dominated by meat. Don’t worry, though – there’s enough of that too.
Along with my biriyani and saag, we had a selection of tandoori roti and naan bread with a jug of mango lassi. Altogether our bill came to around £30, and considering the fact we had food to take home too and the portion size, you’d be hard pressed to find such high quality Desi food in gentrified Cathays.
words YASMIN BEGUM