Dinner tonight was at Muthu’s Curry joint situated along race course road. It’s a restaurant which serves authentic Indian cuisine in a relatively posh setting comparable to that of general hotel restaurants. Having eaten there, why don’t I just share bit more about the place.
The old Muthu’s curry eatery used to be around the race course road area as well, but a much smaller restaurant till they moved to this new place not too sometime ago. It’s directly opposite the current temporary Tekka food center and market, given the actual Tekka food premises being closed for renovations. They have a 2nd Muthu’s curry branch in Singapore at the Suntec fountain terrace basement as well.
The place is very modern looking themed with a posh feel. All the staff are ironically Tamil but no language barrier here- they all speak good English well, which means good for the large considerable number of expats who frequent the joint based on the crowd that night. Overall, if you have a flair for Indian cuisine with quality and nice western ambiance, the place is for you. There is a high degree of authenticity you can get from the large variety of foods you can choose from the menu (including desserts) or the waiters will walk your through the main food selection display area if any of the food names on the menu gives you no clue what is it.
My family was there being invited by cousin Gordon and family as well. So it’s haha very much a dinner on them. We had fish head curry on top few some servings of nun, mutton, cabbage, sotong just to name a few. The food is good, but spicy for me and I kept sweating despite being in air-conditioning! But it’s just me as I was the only one breaking a sweat of of the 7 of us there, mainly because I have a low tolerance for spicy food as my sports and running culture prevents me from eating too much spicy foods.
But I won’t put them down just because of that. The quality of the food is excellent and freshly made (and replenished frequently from the kitchen), but having eaten from the streets of little India and Tekka and with the exception of their Kebabs and Masala Crabs and Prawn, I find that there is actually nothing else special or exclusive in what they serve- you can get the same delicacies off few stores in the Tekka food center at a much cheaper price as well. But Muthu’s curry have their own fair share of pluses- air-conditioning, security, a no-frills one-off melting pot for all what you want Tamil cuisine in one place as well as not having to pull through crowded little India streets and hawker center for crowds and keeps. If paying $6 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks is cool for you, then Muthu’s curry might just justify the asking price for you on their premium menus, which is ironically only al-la-carte (no buffet) and by nature is not exactly cheap either. As the saying goes, you pay $1 for the coffee and $5 for the seat and ambiance in Starbucks, maybe that might justify the free valet parking offered just right at their doorstep as well.
The staff service is just good but not excellent, given the exceptional one or two staff which dampened the rating. The whole place runs off an efficient computerized reservation as well as ordering system, just like what they do in our fast food joints- paperless PDA orders on wi-fi, so the onyl paper they use are your receipts- thats commendable on on their part.
In all Muthu’s curry is not totally bad, but for Singaporeans living in Singapore you will find yourself quite hard to be pleased by what they serve there. I will recommend the place however as an excellent joint for any expat friends you have around town who wants to try authentic Indian cuisine but just don’t want to get down and dirty in the mainstream hawker centers. You will have my vote for that.
Walk round little India
Thereafter, since we were there, my family went off the explore few areas of Little India for the night and we were amazed to see the place like a little self-contained town. I mean yes we know that the place is mostly a populous area for our Tamil counterparts, but in terms of standards, we were surprised that it’s almost matching it like the orchard road of “India” you can say. Race course road on the other hand can be seen as the Holland Village of Little India. Walking through there really makes you feel like a foreigner- people all sitting in open fields chatting in Tamil, all the store sign boards are in Tamil, posters, signs, etc… and everyone is all foreign there, kinda makes you feel very much like you are in a foreign country- with the exception of the warmer Singapore nighttime climate hinting to you that you are not. If it were abit cooler at night it felt just like you are off the streets of a Bombay town. Further coupled with the May Day public holiday crowd, you should go there to see it for yourself, the feeling was unreal.
