Melbourne Food Review: Gaylord Indian Restaurant, Chinatown
I have always wanted to go for a meal at Gaylord’s. It happens to be right opposite to Shanghai Noodle House which is one of our eternal favourite places for dumplings and every time I walked past Gaylord, the kitschy decorations have always drawn me in.
(Japanese slippers – $9?)
Tara and Nat have been there a few times and absolutely swear by them. So one night, we ended up there for a quick dinner because we were all heading off to see a show. We started by cocktails which were rather cheap and awful. I ordered something that was meant to be a mixture of Bailey’s, Frangelico and a couple of other things and all I tasted was watered down Bailey’s. But as Josh said, an Indian restaurant in China Town is hardly an appropriate place for cocktails!
(complimentary papadum and mint sauce)
We were given papadums as nibbles but we went and ordered a lot of entree anyway.
(tandoori mushrooms – $10.00)
The tandoori mushrooms were sizzling hot and well flavoured with the orangey tandoori paste. It was quite good.
(pakora or onion bhaji – $7.00)
We also ordered pakora and onion bhaji, which was rather good. Or maybe because we were hungry! They both looked exceedingly similar to each other.
(chicken butter masala – $16.00)
Maya ordered the butter chicken (murgh makhani) – I had a little bit of it and thought it was rather average. Frankly, my butter chicken was so much better (if I may say so myself). Tara ordered the chicken curry because ‘I always have it when I come here.’ The chicken curry turned out to be the winner of the night. It was easily one of the best chicken curries I have had.
(beef muglai – $17.00)
Josh ordered some sort of beef dish. It wasn’t good at all. The beef was very tough, I don’t think it was ready when they served it up.
(malai kofta – $12.00)
I ordered the malai kofta and it was very average. I have had some really decent malai kofta in my time but this wasn’t one of them.
Others ordered some rice to share. The rice was horrible! You know the horrible stale scent that comes with cheap and nasty basmati rice? That was it. I had a bite and literally couldn’t swallow it.
(vegetable biryani)
Josh and I shared a vegetable biryani – it’s a good thing we ordered the biryani because the rice was just so awful. The biryani on the other hand wasn’t so bad.
(naan)
We also had a naan (yes we ordered waaayyyyyy too much food) which was quite decent.
All in all, my love with kitsch was totally satisfied by Gaylord. The food was quite average compared to many excellent Indian restaurants in Melbourne and her suburbs but if you’re stuck on somewhere to go Friday night with a big group of people before a big night out in town, Gaylord isn’t so bad.
Gaylord Indian Restaurant, 4 Tattersalls La, Melbourne 3000 VIC
* Unfortunately, because we were in a rush, I didn’t write down the prices. Also because most of the dishes were curries, I do have problems distinguishing between them when I went through the photos for this blog so most of the captions are guess and the prices are guesstimates.
