Spice: the final frontier
Pro Some menu novelties.
Con Portions are (mostly) modest.
Pay
€€€
Per Person €23. for starters, mains, naans and 2 beers. Add desserts and it's heading for €26-27. El tenedor offers/points may be available.
Find
Website Clickety click
Access One or two small steps from street. Main eating area is upstairs, some tables on ground floor.
In Short
Hopes. Some smart streetfood creativity.
Reality. Enjoyable, but stayed on the safe side of interesting.
First Impressions. A dayglo heffalump is good fun.
USP? Mumbai-centric tapasy streetfood. Is anywhere else serving Pani puri and Bhel Puri?
The offer in three words. Smartened-up Iberian Indian.
Service! A little slow to get going, but very amiable.
Friend friendly? Enough dishes to keep the V-minded happy.
Rating for dating. Lighting and decor designed for getting-to-know-your-date activities.
Tip? Small one.
Change one thing? Portion sizes aren't consistent.
Revisitability. Maybe for the menu del dia.
Compare & Contrast
Classic curry house.
In Pictures
On Google Images
What's the story?
With a fun and welcoming ambience, Surya offers a pleasant dining experience, 2 minutes from Callao.
Between three, we ordered the €30 tasting menu, plus a selection of other dishes. Starters were entirely vegetarian and, exciting stuff, meant some dishes entirely new to us. How about Pani puri? A deep-fried ball of batter, spiced spud and cheeky chickpea inside. Startlingly, the sauce is served by syringe. Nice flavours, but using medical kit to deliver cumin water makes for clinical presentation in the most literal sense. Enough to make the eyes water, but thank the maker they spared the rubber gloves.
Bhel puri was another new one. An attractively presented swirl of tasty sauces - tomato, coriander, tamarind and so on - topped a layer of rice. This is a success and very enjoyable. Entirely unsure if it was meant to be served cold, it did taste good. One to try, I think.
Classics were fine, too. Vegetable pakoras aren't going to change the world, but made ours a little better as we were scoffing them. A micropot contained mint raita. We needed - and asked for - another. Cheese naan was suitably savoury. Popadoms were cylindrical, which isn't the best shape for sauce scoopage and €1 each which isn't the greatest value. The micropot of mango chutney felt mean. Offered on the table as a condiment, maybe with one or two others, it'd make a nice detail.
Mains were variable. The house speciality is the naan roll.
This comes with potato wedges and something that tasted like guacamole - although we forgot to ask if that's really what it was. Satisfyingly sized in a garlic naan, the lamb was drier than I would have liked. A clever idea, there's a mix-and-match section on the menu to investigate. With plenty of sauces inside to add interest, they're worth exploring.
Tandoori paneer, which we'd all been excited to try, was a surprise. Starter-sized, a mere five cheesey chunks meant we were disappointed. There simply wasn't enough to share. The tasting menu's chicken makhani typified our trip, really. A tasty tomatoey sauce matched moreishly with freshly grated garlic naan, but it needed more heat heft and chunky chicken. Considering the plentiful provision of tasty tubs of spicy sauce with other dishes, this one was unexpectedly underdecorated.
Service took a while to kick off. The two of us who'd arrived early waited 10 minutes for a drinks offer, but the food arrived - up a food lift - in good time, if not quite piping hot at times.
The decor's almost getting carried away with itself, with pictures and nick-nacks. There's the front end of a truck on a wall, looking like it didn't make the right turn at Callao. Upstairs you're greeted by a UV-enhanced painted elephant. The jaunty jumbo keeps watch from a perspex box. All in all, you're not boxed in by other tables and it's a nicely lit space. Your typical Indian interior, it isn't.
In the UK, sub-continent food is now pushing the boundaries of expectation, and we're keen to find restaurants in Madrid aiming for the innovation we've tried here and here. Surya is going the right way and with the courage of its convictions, could achieve excellent results.
Like that papiermache pachyderm, maybe pack your trunk and pay a visit?
Pro Some menu novelties.
Con Portions are (mostly) modest.
Pay
€€€
Per Person €23. for starters, mains, naans and 2 beers. Add desserts and it's heading for €26-27. El tenedor offers/points may be available.
Find
Website Clickety click
Access One or two small steps from street. Main eating area is upstairs, some tables on ground floor.
In Short
Hopes. Some smart streetfood creativity.
Reality. Enjoyable, but stayed on the safe side of interesting.
First Impressions. A dayglo heffalump is good fun.
USP? Mumbai-centric tapasy streetfood. Is anywhere else serving Pani puri and Bhel Puri?
The offer in three words. Smartened-up Iberian Indian.
Service! A little slow to get going, but very amiable.
Friend friendly? Enough dishes to keep the V-minded happy.
Rating for dating. Lighting and decor designed for getting-to-know-your-date activities.
Tip? Small one.
Change one thing? Portion sizes aren't consistent.
Revisitability. Maybe for the menu del dia.
Compare & Contrast
Classic curry house.
In Pictures
On Google Images
What's the story?
With a fun and welcoming ambience, Surya offers a pleasant dining experience, 2 minutes from Callao.
Between three, we ordered the €30 tasting menu, plus a selection of other dishes. Starters were entirely vegetarian and, exciting stuff, meant some dishes entirely new to us. How about Pani puri? A deep-fried ball of batter, spiced spud and cheeky chickpea inside. Startlingly, the sauce is served by syringe. Nice flavours, but using medical kit to deliver cumin water makes for clinical presentation in the most literal sense. Enough to make the eyes water, but thank the maker they spared the rubber gloves.
Bhel puri was another new one. An attractively presented swirl of tasty sauces - tomato, coriander, tamarind and so on - topped a layer of rice. This is a success and very enjoyable. Entirely unsure if it was meant to be served cold, it did taste good. One to try, I think.
Classics were fine, too. Vegetable pakoras aren't going to change the world, but made ours a little better as we were scoffing them. A micropot contained mint raita. We needed - and asked for - another. Cheese naan was suitably savoury. Popadoms were cylindrical, which isn't the best shape for sauce scoopage and €1 each which isn't the greatest value. The micropot of mango chutney felt mean. Offered on the table as a condiment, maybe with one or two others, it'd make a nice detail.
Mains were variable. The house speciality is the naan roll.
This comes with potato wedges and something that tasted like guacamole - although we forgot to ask if that's really what it was. Satisfyingly sized in a garlic naan, the lamb was drier than I would have liked. A clever idea, there's a mix-and-match section on the menu to investigate. With plenty of sauces inside to add interest, they're worth exploring.
Tandoori paneer, which we'd all been excited to try, was a surprise. Starter-sized, a mere five cheesey chunks meant we were disappointed. There simply wasn't enough to share. The tasting menu's chicken makhani typified our trip, really. A tasty tomatoey sauce matched moreishly with freshly grated garlic naan, but it needed more heat heft and chunky chicken. Considering the plentiful provision of tasty tubs of spicy sauce with other dishes, this one was unexpectedly underdecorated.
Service took a while to kick off. The two of us who'd arrived early waited 10 minutes for a drinks offer, but the food arrived - up a food lift - in good time, if not quite piping hot at times.
The decor's almost getting carried away with itself, with pictures and nick-nacks. There's the front end of a truck on a wall, looking like it didn't make the right turn at Callao. Upstairs you're greeted by a UV-enhanced painted elephant. The jaunty jumbo keeps watch from a perspex box. All in all, you're not boxed in by other tables and it's a nicely lit space. Your typical Indian interior, it isn't.
In the UK, sub-continent food is now pushing the boundaries of expectation, and we're keen to find restaurants in Madrid aiming for the innovation we've tried here and here. Surya is going the right way and with the courage of its convictions, could achieve excellent results.
Like that papiermache pachyderm, maybe pack your trunk and pay a visit?
