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Chakra

2497 Yonge St., Toronto 416-487-7188

Dinner for two with wine,

tax and tip, $150.

There is a famous New Yorker cartoon about the consummate foodie who says that he'll only go to a restaurant that uses at least one ingredient that he has never heard of. This is just an extreme expression of our never-ending search for the new new thing, the exotic that becomes commonplace as soon as too many know it. Like sushi, now available in airports and supermarkets but, once upon a time, the epitome of exotic.

The new new thing in Toronto is upscale Indian, at Amaya, Indus Junction, Jaadu and now Chakra (on Yonge Street at Castlefield where Mimosa used to be). Saturday night at Chakra, le tout North Toronto is in attendance, and we're still scratching our heads wondering if any of them will be back, for the service is a comedy of errors. Except it's not that funny.

We're greeted by superfriendly servers who announce their names and charm us. But half an hour later nobody has taken our order and neither food nor liquid has been delivered. Not even a pappadum to munch on. But every time servers come by they give big smiles (one touches our shoulders a lot) and make promises of service very soon. We ask the woman who seems to be a maître d' to take our main course order, but she says she doesn't take orders.

At which point appetizers arrive. Our table for four is too small to fit both our dinner plates and the platters that food arrives on, so the server pulls up an adjacent table. Are the apps the nouvelle Indian being touted? Eh. Veg pakoras aren't as crispy as elsewhere, seekh kebab is the usual ground lamb delightfully seasoned with cumin, ginger and coriander. Grilled prawns have the requisite trendy pomegranate seed benediction but are otherwise ordinary. And crab cakes, touted as Indian tasting, have way more potato than crab taste. If that's what the subcontinent makes of a crab cake, spare me.

And we still haven't managed to order our mains. The extra-affable server came by once, touched our shoulders, looked into our eyes and made promises of a swift return, but never came back. After we get pushy, the woman who said she doesn't take orders agrees to do so. She doesn't write anything down until I ask her if she's going to remember it all. When I ask her what Chakra cashews are she says: "Didn't you get those when you arrived? You were supposed to."

The pleasantly spiced cashews arrive with our mains, but there's nowhere to put them because the server took away the extra table he had added because somebody needed it. So when they (finally) bring the mains, we're forced to juggle the plates to fit on the table, because the servers aren't quite up to the challenge.

Most (but not all) of what we ordered arrives. They forget the raita and the chutney, but we're scared to remind them because 1) it took too much work to order the food in the first place, 2) there's no room on the table and 3) the stuff that does arrive is ho-hum.

Cilantro mint chicken curry, which reads so well ("grain-fed, air-chilled chicken, fresh cilantro-mint") is overcooked chicken in the usual brown sauce. There is a mint/coriander scent, but it's pallid. Palak, arugula and paneer curry also reads very nouvelle. Who ever put arugula or organic baby spinach in palak paneer? Well, if this kitchen did it, we can't tell, for this is the same long-stewed spinach with cheese cubes that you find in curry houses from Bombay to Brampton. Shrimps from the tandoor are not very big, they're kind of mushy, and we can't find the promised "side of cilantro butter." We also can't find the garlic on the garlic naan. Tandoori gobi curry is pleasantly pedestrian cauliflower curry, and lamb boti kebab is nicely seasoned but tough.

The only two triumphs of the $300-plus for four dinner is nicely cooked halibut in rich curry with tomato, fenugreek and onion rendered creamy with coconut milk, and house-made kulfi, which is cream and milk boiled down into a concentrate, seasoned with saffron and cardamom and churned into ice cream.

The service has been a combo of the excessively familiar - shoulder patting, hand-shaking, broad laughs, introducing themselves by name - and the neglectful. We can see other diners fuming with impatience at nearby tables, as they wait ... and wait ... and wait for service. Substituting ersatz intimacy for attending to diners' needs feels almost manipulative. If this is the new Indian experience, take me back to the curry houses of yesteryear.