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Patiently Awaiting Nirvana National Post Restaurant Review by Jacob Richler Chef: Vishwanat Gord Hours: Lunch seven days, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dinner Sunday to Thursday, 5:30 to 10 p.m. Dinner Friday and Saturday, 5:30 to 11 p.m. Reservations: Unnecessary Wheelchair access: Yes Price: Dinner for two with lassi, tax and tip: $100 Head west for Mississauga, peel off the 401 at the Hurontario exit and drive south a few blocks to its intersection with a street called Brunel, and on the southeast corner you will find a showcase example of Canadian multiculturalism at work and at its best. The immigrants here cannot be criticized for reaping the rich benefits of their new home without making any inconvenient cultural concessions. No, they are instead mixing it up seamlessly with our own homegrown bad taste. Suburbia. Parking lots divided by eighth-lane intersections. And a big new strip mall boasting the faux-retro touch of a peaked roof, packed with a row of bars and restaurants that begins with a Japanese place called Kumai sushi, then a Canadian bar with fluorescent Coors Lite and Labatt Blue signs in its windows called My Apartment, then a Chinese restaurant called Salt pepper peddling the obscure cuisine of the Hakka, a family restaurant called Sasha?s specializing in souvlaki, the not very grand-looking Mississauga Grand Ballroom and, in between, an Indian restaurant named Nirvana. Actually, the sign reads ?Nirvana the Flavours of India,? and that is of course ambitious territory for a restaurant to stake out. For the subcontinent packs 17 provinces, each of them a distinct culture, and one might fairly imagine that a place boasting 15 major languages and some 1,500 minor ones likely packs a sizable range of cooking styles, too. But what can you do? ?Nirvana: a few flavours of India? just doesn?t roll off the tongue quite the same way. As it happens, should you give them the benefit of the doubt and settle in at a brass-plate-dressed table in the spacious dining room and open up one of the big bound menus, you will find Nirvana in fact offers far more of a range of Indian cookery than our usual Anglo-Bangladeshi and Punjabi staples. Sure, the do the usual tandoori and aloo ghobi and murgh makhni, but the also do a lot of stuff you have never seen before in local parts. The list is long and dense, with linguistic flourishes, and so, like so many Indian menus, it makes for good reading. Before rushing to conclusions, order up a Kingfisher or Cheetah beer and take in the offerings carefully. Be advised, for example, that not all tandoori dishes are created equal. Murgh (chicken) tandoori is ?marinated and smoke roasted in a traditional clay oven,? while murgh makhmali is ?slow roasted on coals,? murgh kali mirch is ?barbecued to a spicy perfection,? murgh malai sheekh is merely ?gently barbecued,? while chooza tikka is ?barbecued to mouth-watering succulence,? reshmi kabab is ?barbecued to a silky finish,? yet machli tukda is merely ?slow-barbecued over embers,? and paneer malai sheekh is instead ?barbecued to a melt-in-the-mouth softness.? There are 16 items in the tandoori section alone, and 74 on the menu at large, and, frankly, the wealth of choice makes for a lot of uncertainty. Speaking for myself, when the waiter arrived at my table, pen and pad poised for order taking, all I knew with any assuredness was that the guy who wrote the description of that South Asian classic, lamb stewed with saag (spinach), as ?a robustness of lamb endowed with the power-packed punch of fresh spinach? must have seen a lot more Popeye cartoons that I ever did. In any case, we soon settled on a handsome array of dishes, settled in with some pleasantly crisp pappadums with a couple of dipping sauces (mint, tamarind) and kicked back and waited. We were hopelessly famished when the first dishes arrived. All the same, I can say with professional detachment that they were very sound. Jhinga sherdil ? tandoori ?roasted prawns ? were cooked to an enticing state of succulence, the sweet flesh pleasantly enveloped in a sarcophagus of fragrant oven-dried yogurt based marinade. Paneer ke gulgule ? pan-fried bread-crumb rolled cottage cheese balls ? were crispy and flavorsome. And tandoorized button mushrooms were pleasingly spicy and within their tasty skins virtually liquefied from the heat. Tandoori chicken boasted an excellent balance of spice and smoke, and the flesh, blackened and crisp at the corners, remained succulent at the bone. Nirvana is apparently not something to be rushed. But in time we tucked in happily to a plate of succulent ginger and black pepper marinated chicken breast (Murgh kali mirch), some splendid king crab legs sautéed in a thick, garlicky, fragrantly spiced tomato sauce, some pleasant lightly cooked butter chicken, a bowl of top okra stewed in yogurt. We, on the other hand, were pleasantly stuffed. And content that we had found the most enticingly varied Indian menu in town, all of it capably executed, and sometimes better than that, but at some considerable cost to our other plans for the afternoon. National Post
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