Yellow Mirchi (Westgate, Auckland, New Zealand)

It has been a long time since we are able to dine in outside, Auckland was still in a lockdown until last Friday which means we can only do takeaways up until then. But now we are out of it and moved to a new Traffic Light System and that means we can start reviewing restaurants again. During that time, we have shared Top Lists during times we usually post Restaurant Reviews, Tuesday and Thursdays but now were back in business. Our restaurant for today was one of the last places we had some takeaways, I wanted to try this restaurant since we moved to Westgate- but that did not happen and we were not able to wait for restaurants to fully open before we reviewed it, so, here we are enjoying their food at the comfort of our own home.

We ordered here for lunch last weekend after a long tramping session with my wife at Riverhead Forest, we were quite hungry if you imagine so the wait for this coming out from the time we order and the time we unpack it at home was quite painful. The wait was paid off because first the amount of food was quite good compared to takeaways and it what we ordered was quite good. As usual we grabbed our favourite Indian dish, Butter Chicken (NZ$19.00), prepared with tender pieces of boneless chicken half cooked in Tandoor and finished in a creamy flavoured tomato sauce, it was paired with rice and Naan (NZ$3.50). Another order was this Biryani (NZ$19.00), a choice of Chicken, Lamb and Beef, our choice was beef with Raita on the side. They all come in a large container and each serving can feed two people.

We loved the butter chicken; in fact, it was one of the best butter chickens I tried in Auckland. It was not as sweet as the most, still sweet but it was more on the tomato tangy side which we really liked. The gravy was thick and we loved the fact that the chicken has that smoky taste due to it being partly cooked in a tandoor first. The cut used are boneless chicken thighs which gave it a juicier meat rather than dry compared to the restaurants that uses breast.

As for the biryani, this was amazing too. The rice was perfectly spiced, not to strong, just enough to give it some potent flavours then it was studded with this melt in your mouth beef pieces which I believe was from a brisket cut, giving the right balance of fat and meat for an even better flavour. The raita that it came with was thick and sour, not watery which perfectly balanced the whole dish. Overall, both dishes were one of the best Indians we had for a while.

As for the naan, this was not on par as the dishes we ordered, while it was good, it did not fulfil our expectation, it was light and not dense, while it was chewy with crispy bubbled bits, for us a good naan, has some density to it which this one did not have. It was not bad; it was not that good compared to the others we tried elsewhere. So, there you go, a quick review about this place, so far, we are happy with the dishes and hopefully with restaurants now back in business, we may be able to find time to dine in and try their other curries, as the two dishes we had did not let us down.

Yellow Mirchi
Address: 5/579 Don Buck Road, Massey, Auckland 0614, New Zealand
Phone: +649 832 0306
Website: https://www.yellowmirchi.co.nz/