Dinner at Gayatri Indian Restaurant @ Race Course Road

Another interesting and flavorful cuisine for dinner. This time, we headed to Gayatri Restaurant serving Indian food. This restaurant is located at 122 Race Course Road #01-01 Singapore 218583. For reservations or queries, one may call 6291 1011.

It has a classy-looking, brightly-lit interior with many traditional, interesting decorative pieces.  A very homely ambience with friendly service staff ready at the beck and call of the restaurant's diners.

We were shown to a table and given the menu. I offered to order since I have been here once before.

During the previous visit, my friend and I ordered their popular dish, Fish Head Curry. It was spicy and really delicious; however my dinner partner this time round did not fancy fish. What a pity, because their fish heads came with a lot of meat, very tender too.

We started with the Chicken Dum Biryani - chicken cooked with Basmati rice over Dum. The chicken was tender and tasted well-marinated, while the richly-spiced Basmati rice complemented the meat very well.

We were also served a tray of Papadum - crispy, thin, disc-shaped pieces of food made from black grain, or flour from other sources such as lentils, chickpeas, rice or potato. The Papadum is very delicious - it has the texture of potato chips but a different taste. I love eating it with my Biryani as it enhances the taste tremendously.

The Papadum may also be referred to / spelled as papadam, poppadom, papad or appalam.

We also had the Mutton Mysore (the latter is pronounced as "my-saw-rae") - tender morsels of mutton pan-fried in an aromatic and spicy dry gravy studded with cashew nuts.  The mutton was stripped of the heavy gamey odor and each mouthful boosted the rich, sumptuous spiciness of the sauce it was cooked in.

 The next must-have item was their Butter Chicken - pieces of juicy, char-grilled chicken cooked in cashew nut gravy along with garlic, ginger and onion. The flesh is really soft, and coupled with the scrumptious gravy, this dish is ideal eaten with bread or rice. I was tempted for a second helping, but my stomach could not take anymore food in.

I countered the spiciness of the food with a glass of Mango Lassi - a refreshing, yogurt-based drink blended with mango. Some people prefer the salted Lassis, but for me, I love the mango flavor.

Finally, we finished the meal with dessert of Gulab Jamun - a piece of fried milk ball in golden sugar syrup, strewn with thin slices of ....macadamia nuts? Love the sweet creamy taste of this unique dessert, especially after a heavily-flavored meal.

Overall, my second visit to this restaurant was very satisfactory again, and I would definitely come back for more.