TRUTH be told, when a friend suggested a dinner of goat briyani, I was intrigued but also a bit worried.
Would the meat be too gamey, I wondered. Did the restaurant serve anything else?
But greed got the better of me and I made my way to Swaadhisht in Chander Road, a short street with a long row of restaurants off Serangoon Road, by way of Belilios Road.
The restaurant serves the cuisine of Kerala in South India along the Malabar Coast, and there's an honest, homecooked taste to the dishes I sampled over two visits.
KERALA CUISINE: Goat briyani (above) served with mint, pickle, salad and pasam as dessert, and Malabar fish curry with appam (below) from Swaadhisht Restaurant.
Its speciality: goat meat, which is used widely in the cuisine.
I needn't have worried, though. When the pot of goat briyani ($15) arrived, we dug in and I found the big chunks of meat tender, spicy and flavourful. There was not one hint of goatiness.
The fluffy grains of basmati soaked up the thick, spicy gravy and the fried onions scattered on top of the dish added sweetness.
On another visit, I tried goat meat chops ($12.50), which came swathed in a similar thick gravy, and it was tender and delicious too.
But to sample really authentic Kerala cuisine, opt for one of the Thallasseri briyanis, named after the Kerala city famous for its fragrant Tellicherry pepper.
The briyani is made with Jeeraka Chamba rice, which cooks up softer and a little stickier than basmati. Order the prawn version ($14) with lots of medium-sized prawns buried in the rice.
Also worth trying: the Malabar Meen Curry ($8), a searingly spicy fish curry made with either Spanish mackerel or pomfret. We got generous pieces of the former bathed in a sauce that had us sweating within minutes.
Beyond the heat, there's an intense, very pleasing coconuttiness to the curry, which comes from the addition of shredded coconut to the spice paste.
We mopped up the curry with pillowy rounds of appam ($3 for two), followed by gulps of mango lassi ($3.50) to cool down.
On another visit, I tried the considerably less fiery Malabar Fish Molly ($7.50), fragrant with whole curry leaves and kinder to chilli cowards like me. But I missed the tongue tingling heat of the other dish.
If you order one of the briyani set meals, you get a little bowl of payasam for dessert.
This milk pudding is flavoured with cardamom and can be made with rice, broken up bits of vermicelli or skinned green beans.
On my last visit, I had the rice version with toothsome chunks of coconut shot through the pudding. It was a sweet ending to a delicious meal.
Swaadhisht 47 Chander Road
Tel: 6392-0513 Open: 11am to 11pm daily Rating: ***
