Once again, a Grapevine food critic faces the almost insurmountable task of reviewing a meal that was damn near perfect, and doing it without sounding like a thinly veiled advertisement or a love letter. This doesn’t happen a lot, mind you. In fact, it mostly seems to happen at one place. The above analogy is even stolen from a previous glowing review of the restaurant in question, and that is the very restaurant you are reading about right now – Indian restaurant Austur-Indía Félagið. And I can tell you that they’ve still got it. In fact, they may have gotten even better. Seriously, when your only complaint at a restaurant is that you get too full to finish all of the delights at hand, you know they’re on to something.
Let me tell you about the chicken course we enjoyed. Reshimi Kebab, it was called, and the only comment I wrote about it in my notebook was ‘wow!’ Rarely have I tasted a piece of chicken that was grilled to such perfection; its tender and juicy meat would have held its own quite well, but the addition of some nicely thought-out spices and a minty aftertaste pushed it well beyond the ‘awesome’ category.
And then there was the Vindaloo lamb in all its spicy glory. It is always telling when you feel compelled to keep shovelling food in your mouth even though it is basically burning holes in your cheeks and tongue. But a taste of the vindaloo invited another one, and so on until the heat got so scalding that not even the plentiful Rajita could soothe the pain. But it was worth it.
In fact, everything my companion and I consumed during our two-hour stay at Austur-Indía Félagið, from the naan bread and tomato rice right down to the Cobra beer was worthy of praise. The service was also excellent, and befitting of the restaurant’s pricing policy (although the staff probably knew we were there for reviewing purposes, everyone else eating there seemed to get the same amount of attention, too).
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