Handi in Taj Palace Hotel, Deira, Dubai - Restaurant Reviews

Handi

Handi is the best top-end Indian eatery in town. Discuss this article

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Handi is the best top-end Indian eatery in town. Step into the warm, welcoming cavern of a restaurant and you are greeted by the smiling faces of the polished waiting staff and a pair of bongo players whose combined percussive expertise provides a fittingly evocative soundtrack to the gracious modern dishes on offer.

In case you hadn’t figured it out, Handi is not your average tikka masala joint: ready your palate for an altogether more refined and subtly spiced experience than you might have come to expect from the offerings of Dubai’s less salubrious sub-continental eateries.

The head chef is from the Qureshi dynasty; his ancestors worked in the Royal Court and prior to his tenure in Dubai, he worked in the Taj in Calcutta. CVs don’t get much better than that. Handi is removed from the passing traffic of the hotel’s thoroughfare by an elegant screen and is furnished with generously appointed tables placed at discreet angles, allowing for a atmosphere or cummunal intimacy.

Start with a lamb soup; an intensely meaty milky coloured broth replete with tender hunks of flesh on the bone. Discs of fried poppadam and lashings of grated yellow rice semolina come doused in a thick yoghurt and tamarind sauce; to the uninitiated this taste explosion might be somewhat overwhelming, but it’s a refreshing and texturally adventurous way to start your meal.

Mains are equally excellent. A delicately pungent, smoky and fresh aubergine dish, baigan ka bartha flavoured with hints of fenugreek and finely chopped onions is a fresh contrast to the feisty gulf prawn masala and an extremely tender mild chicken curry. If you’re a fan of the all-in-one approach to curry consumption, try one of the dum pukht birianis which are a speciality of the house and come with a baked bread lid covering a mound of steaming, fragrant rice cooked to fluffy, succulent perfection with either fish, prawn, chicken, beef or lamb. Delicious. The only downside to the Indian cuisine experience at Handi is that there’s no alcohol, although given the effects of a number of pints on a curry filled stomach, that might be no bad thing.

By Time Out Dubai