accent | Johnny Prime

I finally had the opportunity to eat at Indian Accent when a gang of us food maniacs came in for a quadruple date.

This place has been on my radar for a while, and I had heard it was one of the city’s best Indian restaurants.

We all opted to all get the four course meal rather than do the full chef’s tasting menu. But, first off, the cocktails here are fantastic. There’s spice, interesting flavor combinations, and a lot of really inventive riffs on old classics.

The meal starts with some amuse type offerings.

Above is a garam masala spiced pumpkin soup along with some blue cheese bread puffs (and a pair of our drinks). Below is the revealing of a nice fried beet root bite.

My first course: a collection of crab claws cooked in butter-pepper-garlic sauce with cauliflower. These were so rich and flavorful. Very bold, assertive flavors that I really loved.

My wife’s first course: the mathri trio, consisting of smoked eggplant bharta, duck khurchan and chicken khurchan. The duck one was definitely our favorite of the three, with chicken close behind.

My second course: sweet pickle ribs with sun-dried mango and onion seeds. Amazing flavor on these babies, and super tender. I’ve had Indian flavored “BBQ” before but this was much better. It had sweetness, spice, acidity… just really nicely balanced.

My wife’s second course: pathar beef kebab with bone marrow nihari. This was really interesting and had a pouring element to the dish presentation. I think, however, the ribs were way better.

My third course: ghee roast lamb with roomali roti pancakes. This was essentially like the Indian version of peking duck, in which the diner assembles his “tacos” and eats.

Here’s the set up:

That’s the roasted lamb meat on the left, cucumbers and sauces in the center, and pancakes on the right. In the upper center is an accompaniment that I chose for this course, which was essentially a stuffed naan type bread called kulcha. Mine was stuffed with pastrami and mustard grain (there were many other choices).

Here’s a closer look at the succulent roasted lamb meat:

And one of the little fuckers all assembled and ready to eat:

This shit was amazing, and I definitely feel like I picked the winning dish of the night (although a few others also ordered this).

My wife’s third course: braised lamb in a prune korma sauce with rajasthani pearl millet khichdi.

Not sure if you can see it but the cilantro leaf baked into the wafer cracker thing was pretty impressive and beautiful. The lamb was cooked for something like six hours and became incredibly tender and remained juicy. Great dish.

My dessert: doda barfi treacle tart with vanilla bean ice cream.

This was perfect. The tart on the bottom was similar to a toffee cake, or a cross between a cake and a crumble. Awesome.

My wife’s dessert: cheeni ki roti with marshmallows and old monk ice cream (rum raisin).

Beautiful plating, again, and really unique flavors. This was essentially like a disassembled pastry tart meets s’mores.

I also tasted a bite of the meethe chawal, which is sweet rice with almond milk and barberries. I said could have easily been a breakfast item as well as dessert. It was similar to oatmeal in taste and texture, only dry rather than like porridge.