Monal (Pheasant) is an Indian/Pakistani restaurant in C/Juan Llorens, run by two brothers Akil and Nadeem. It has a strong following and Nitu has taken a group from Valencia Curry Lovers there for a meal before and independently Marian and Riki had also eaten there not long after it first opened. Neither Matt nor our guest Sid from Khetosa Vegetable Boxes had previously eaten there.
We visited on Sunday evening, a quiet evening in the restaurant as it turned out.
We received a friendly welcome and they happily enlarged our reserved table inside to give us more space. There is terrace seating as well. The menu is relatively small with 67 dishes. It has a separate wine list with around a dozen wines including a good representation of Valencian wines from La Viña, the Cooperative in La Font de la Figuera. (Icono, Juan de Juanes and Venta del Puerto).
We ordered a bottle of Verdeo Verdejo, a 2020 Rueda from Torres. Clean and bright, fresh and youthful with a yellow colour. Fragrant on the nose, and fresh, with citric and tropical notes in the mouth. (12€)
This accompanied the papadums and the starters. Monal has a wider range of chutney’s and we were presented with five, the best of which was undoubtedly an awesome lime pickle, almost unique in Valencia!
For starters we ordered Vegetable Pakora, Seekh Kebab, Shami Kebab, and a chicken tikka. Of these, the Chicken tikka was undoubtedly the best, well-spiced, moist and tender and served sizzling. The shami kebab had too much egg for our taste. The Pakoras were crispy, the texture suggested mashed potato in the mix rather than small cubes and they were a little dense. The seekh kebabs were also excellent, good texture and spice and good meaty flavour underlying.
The wine whilst good did not have quite enough body and flavour to stand up to the spicing in the food.
The ambience was ok, the music in the background good and the aircon was good. But it is not a restaurant where the smell of spice hits you as you walk in!
For main courses we ordered Lamb with Okra, Butter chicken, Chicken Madras, Garlic and cheese naan, Peshwari naan, Kulcha naan and a Basmati Special Rice.
To accompany this we tried a Rosado, Santa Digna Cabernet Sauvignon from Torres but this time from their Chilean Central Valley vineyards. Quite a deep strawberry colour it has an expressive bouquet, lots of ripe fruit such as strawberry and plum with a citrus (grapefruit) note. In the mouth this had a lovely balance between the fruit and the acidity and a persistent finish. It not only balanced the spice in the food but enhanced the enjoyment of the meal. This is highly recommended! (14€)
The lamb with okra was the best of the main courses, the lamb chunky and tender, the okra well cooked (no slime) and the spicing correct (we asked for this to be medium spiced). The butter chicken was good, but could have done with a little more spice, our fault for asking this to be at a level aimed at Spanish customers. The Chicken Madras (with the highest heat option) was the disappointing dish and the least typical Madras we have tasted so far. It just lacked flavour and there was an underlying ‘oily ‘ sensation which was not ghee.
Matt felt that there was insufficient delineation between the flavours of the lamb and chicken madras and Nitu pointed out that where a restaurant uses a mother sauce and then adds a specific sauce to give the dish its spice profile, it has to be a very good sauce and if it is it can work perfectly. Equally of course if there is a problem with the mother sauce it will be carried into all the dishes.
The offending naan….
Of the breads, The garlic naan with cheese was good, the flaky, fresh garlic full of flavour, it could have done with a little more cheese maybe. The Peshwari naan was nice , coming with dried fruit (mainly raisins) which we repeated later, the second having more dried apricot, quite different! The rice was standard with a mix of colours, but the Kulcha Naan was again disaapointing Nitu has had this before and previously enjoyed it but on this occasion, they had used flaked dry chili rather than fresh and it didn’t work well.
Probably because it was a Sunday evening the only dessert option was ice-cream, either Mango or Pistachio Kulfi.
The service was good, if understated. We were offered spicing (heat) options, we were advised when we had ordered enough, and the waiter engaged with our comments.
However in our overall view we were a little underwhelmed, those who had eaten there before feeling they had had better previous experiences. The portions were not tiny but did seem on the small side. But we did order more or less the usual amount of dishes and there were pieces of naan left at the end. We felt they had not paid sufficient attention to the spicing in the main dishes apart from the lamb.
The total cost was just over 26€ a head (a couple of gin-tonics, a coffee and water were included) The wine mark-up—discounting supermarket offers—was around 100% which is less than many other restaurants. A takeaway service is available. ‘Price to Value Ratio’ was average but clearly had one or two of the dishes been better this would be above average.
Overall it was not a bad meal and we would all return.