Amaya
1701 Bayview Ave. Toronto. 416-322-3270. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $110.
Toronto gourmands can be easily forgiven for not believing in Indian food. An aversion to greasy acrid curries and dried-out biryani is easy to develop, if one's sole experience of Indian food were the product of Little India (Gerrard Street East between Greenwood and Coxwell).
Don't get me wrong. I adore Little India, for it represents everything I hold dear about my hometown: I'm proud to be a citizen of a city that celebrates its various cultures instead of asking them to melt into one big homogeneous pot.
Strolling through Little India (like Koreatown or one of our several Chinatowns) is the next best thing to travelling abroad - rich with the sights and sounds of exotic places. But that doesn't necessarily mean I want to have dinner there. Aficionados of cheap eats will pillory me for this, but not all noodle houses or curry shops are created equal. Some cuisines lend themselves more readily to being produced on the cheap.
Pho, for example, is the ultimate cheap dinner. Its genesis as the meal-in-a-bowl sold on the streets of Hanoi explains why pho's destiny is to be cheap. It started that way, as street food. Same for dim sum and other inexpensive Chinese food. It was, historically, quick food made with inexpensive ingredients. Hence, it translates well to cheap restaurants.
Indian food, on the other hand, has its roots in the great houses of the upper class. My Indian friend who taught me the mysteries of curries also made it clear that people of her moneyed class would never go to restaurants, which served food disdained by the well-off, who prided themselves on keeping excellent cooks. These skilled artisans hounded market sellers for the freshest spices and the best vegetables, baked their naans and their chapatis fresh for every meal, and would not have been caught dead immersing different foods in a generic "curry sauce."
Which unfortunately is what a lot of our local curry parlours do. Not their fault: If customers won't pay good money for carefully braised fish, meat and vegetables, each in its individually made sauce, then a pot that simmers all day, into which you dump whatever the customer orders.
Vancouverites have been standing in interminable lineups for Vikram Vij's high-end Indian delights. Here, we have had only Cuisine of India to fill that void, and it has three problems: One, it's way north on Yonge Street. Two, the room is blah. Three, the service is not stellar.
All of which explains why Amaya, which opened recently in the (renovated) premises of the former Jov, is heaven-sent. The combination of silken service and excellent ingredients freshly cooked, with sensitive spicing, is seductive in the way that only the food of the subcontinent can be - rich, assertive, complex, exotic. Amaya prawns are very spicy but restrained, their sauce a tamarind-scented green mango curry with green chili and fenugreek, sweet and hot and perfectly balanced on the big barely cooked shrimp. Even samosas, the most common of Indian appetizers, are crisper than usual, nary a hint of grease, and served with a splendour of chutneys - pale green coriander with mint, red sweet/sour plum, and a translucent mango purée zinged with mint.
But my favourite Amaya app is its one nod to street food: Chaat is a savoury pyramid composed of tiny wheat crisps, equally crispy puffed rice and sprouted beans flavoured to a dazzling sweet/sour pitch with tamarind, coriander, mint and pomegranate seeds, all gentled with slender ribbons of spiced yogurt.
Ordinary Indian restaurants throw some red-marinated chicken in the oven and call it tandoori. Amaya does tandoori duck breast, ruby slices in orange-inflected sauce with shredded apple. Move over, duck à l'orange. Lamb shank xacutti is uber-tender lamb in a complex sauce with cardamom, coriander seed, coconut, cloves and a hint of sweetness. Coconut lobster curry is what happened when the maharani met Marie Antoinette: a sauce so creamy it meets and matches the soft flesh of barely cooked lobster, but unlike a French cream sauce, this one is jazzed with ginger, garlic and cardamom pods.
Their sole error is overcooked halibut wrapped in banana leaf with mint coriander paste, of which there is not enough to make an impression. The too-thick coconut sauce on the outside is of no service, either.
Indian cooks honour the vegetable kingdom and keep it holy: Amaya's veg biryani, served in a tall pounded copper vessel, is moist saffron-scented rice with big chunks of al dente veg. Their palak paneer is puréed spinach that has not been cooked to death, with cubes of very fresh cheese and an embarras de richesses of garlic. They do great work with various lentils, adding spice, ginger and garlic to make very beautiful dals. Ditto the thrill of Amaya's breads, their garlic naan being a triumph of flaky delicate bread with toasted garlic and butter to make it dangerously delightful.
This theme continues for dessert.
How not to succumb to the thrill of dark dense chocolate terrine? Or cute little shortbreads with pulverized almonds, flavoured with chai? Dark chocolate truffles delicately spiced with garam masala? Spiced nut brittle?
This is the Indian food we've been waiting for. Say goodbye to acrid curries and boring biryanis. Amaya is to downmarket curry houses what the Taj Mahal is to a hovel.
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