As I mentioned last fall in my review of Fat Paulie’s, we occasionally have an opportunity to visit our friends Liz and Wes in Saratoga Springs, which in addition to spending time with them and seeing the horses occasionally, also gives us a good opportunity to explore some of the restaurants around Saratoga Springs. In this case, we were unsure of where we wanted to go for dinner, so we ended up basically wandering around downtown until we found a place that interested us. As we wandered on Henry Street east of downtown, we started to pick up some nice aromatic notes, and then saw why: Karavalli Regional Cuisine of India. A quick glance at the menu looked interesting enough that we had to give it a try.
After a very friendly greeting, we were promptly seated and offered up a bottle of Saratoga’s own spring water. Looking over the menu, we decided immediately that we had to get some parata. I always like a good roti or parata, with nice, flaky layers of hand-stretched dough all crisped up. Texture-wise, the parata at Karavalli reminded me of the excellent roti from Gopal’s Corner in London, but the use of coconut oil gave this a distinct and enjoyable aroma and crispiness. If you go to Karavalli, don’t miss the parata!
For my main course, they had a lot of seriously good sounding Indian dishes, mostly from the southern regions, particularly Kerala and Chettinad, so I wanted to try one of these. I settled upon the Chicken Chettinadu, which was some nicely curried chicken served up in a black pepper and roasted coconut sauce. This was not a dish for the faint of heart, this dish is very bold, with intense black pepper flavor, but it is extremely aromatic and flavorful when mellowed by the coconut milk. Reminded me of the Chicken Xacuti I had had a few months previously in Lisbon at Tentações de Goa, and that’s no accident; Chettinad food shares a lot of heritage with Goan cuisine (where Chicken Xacuti is from), and both nominally have a lot of Portuguese influence as well as the local traditions. In any case, an extremely flavorful, balanced, and enjoyable chicken curry.
Carol, meanwhile, went for the daily fish specially, which was tilapia on this visit. The daily special fish is served in the meen molee style, which is a flavorful curry with leaves, mustard seeds, tomato, lots of turmeric, and finally some coconut milk to soften the sauce (the nominal folk history of meen molee is that a local woman, Molee, adapted their local Keralite spicy curry of red chiles and peppers with some coconut milk to appeal to the Portuguese traders, and the dish was popular). Whether or not that origin story is true, the resulting dish is delicious: perfectly tender and nicely crisped tilapia, served with a lot of fried pepper strips and curry leaves in a very flavorful, creamy coconut-and-turmeric sauce. Definitely a winner; I’d like to come back and try this with some other fish varieties as well.
So, we really enjoyed our dinner at Karavalli. The flavors are bold and well-composed, and it’s a nice variation from some of the other Indian restaurants in the area. And with some quite affordable prices and a friendly staff, I’m certain we’re going to come back another time.
