Curries take a back seat at new southside Indian restaurant

One of Brisbane’s most well-known cafe owners has swapped coffee for curries, launching a new Indian restaurant. Although its her roti rolls and Indian-style bread and butter puddings that are sure to steal the show.

Curries usually form the lion’s share of an Indian restaurant’s menu, but Brisbane’s newly opened Soo Delhi promises to change all that – only offering six of the synonymous dishes.

The restaurant at Stones Corner in the city’s south will be following the popular Delhi tradition of specialising in just a handful of curries – allowing for the rest of the menu to be filled with exciting alternatives ranging from kebab-like rolls loaded with lamb and goat to Indian-style bread and butter puddings.

“In Delhi, one restaurant won’t have like 50 different curries, they will have five to six best ones – that’s what we are trying to create here,” said co-owner Manita Arnold, formerly of the now-defunct Pearl cafe and restaurant in Woolloongabba.

Making up the six will be butter chicken, a lamb shank option, palak paneer, a grilled salmon curry, dal makhni and Malai chicken tikka.

“All our recipes are family recipes passed on from generations,” said Ms Arnold, who owns the business with her brother Aakash Gadi and has a family background in restaurant ownership in India.

The 90-seat venue along Logan Rd, which has a beautiful outdoor courtyard, wants to push the envelope with what many Australians think about Indian food. That means following traditional cooking methods but presenting them in a modern style, as well as offering dishes outside the ordinary.

The Delhi pav bhaji at Soo Dehli in Stones Corner.

That includes the likes of Thali, chicken tikka rolls using roti as the bread, chole puri halva (a masala stir-fried chickpea dish), the puffy bread-like aloo puri, vegan sausages and their version of Delhi pav bhaji, which comes almost like a deconstructed curry burger.

The venue is still awaiting its liquor licence, but you can be sure the wine list will be a good one once its available, with Ms Arnold a former winemaker. Until then, it’s BYO at lunch and dinner Wednesday-Sunday.