Sauma, Perth: restaurant review
Chrysler’s Cruiser. Alessi’s Starck citrus press. The Great Gatsby (as told by Baz Luhrmann). For some, style will always be more important than substance and the restaurant world is no different.
Places with forgettable food but great fit-out, strong branding, cool websites and staff in smart outfits have always been with us, always will, so in that sense Sauma, a newish Perth Indian in Northbridge, fits a grand tradition. A place you want to like but just can’t.
Why? It looks great. It reminds me of the kind of instant heritage fit-out you see in Bali. Lots of old sanskrit panels, interesting light fittings, distressed timber. You’ll thrill to the possibilities of subcontinental “street food” in such a sexy space. A decent wine list with fair prices. A menu promising value and, more, one of the world’s great “umbrella” cuisines, delivered in a modern way.
I love an ethnic cuisine reinterpreted by young restaurateurs, but when the style cart gets before the substance donkey? I’d say Sauma has dumbed down the complexities of Indian cuisine; flavours suggest compromise on the complex layering of spices, ginger, turmeric, onion that are the foundations of the cuisine’s appeal. All the toasty, warm, dark goodness of nuanced aromas and tastes seem to have been cooked down to one not very interesting “Indian sauce”.
Blow by blow. Great pappadam with a cumin-spiced “house made yoghurt” studded with halved red grapes. Fantastic, light, blistered and charred naan. We peaked early.
Delhi chicken tikka consists of big nuggets of tepid, flabby chicken with very little charry tandoor crust. Not great. The “korma” sauce should be thick, nutty, cumin and coriander-laced and yoghurty. It’s yellow and bland. There’s a garnish of sad apple batons, mint, coriander and red chilli. This shouldn’t necessarily be a “hot” dish yet it’s immediately obvious flavours, and heat, have been tamed to the point of comatose.
Paratha are filled, floppy flatbread with potato, ajwain seed and a delightful little pot of pickled carrot and a bit of pineapple in a spicy sauce… about the only thing with any real zing in it all night.
The same type of bland, gluey korma sauce is back to drown a veg korma – red capsicum, eggplant, beans, potato, spinach, okra. It’s another suggestion of one sauce, different heroes. And it wasn’t much of a sauce to begin with.
A big, very well cooked (as in cooked too far, not nicely) duck Maryland comes in a “rajisthani” (sic) sauce with pickled cucumber, kipfler potato (still an exotic vegetable in a state with bizarre potato-growing laws), toasted coriander seeds and a sad curry leaf for garnish. Bland.
Another meat dish is “Mountain style goat cooked on the bone”: more like the foothills, really, and, yes, our puddle of brown liquid with diced meat included bone. One small, thimble-sized piece of shin bone. Somehow the zingy heat of ginger and chilli had been lost in another generic “Indian” gravy. It all looks and tastes like something you get on a plane. Down the back.
Like most dessert platters, there’s good (pistachio kulfi on a stick) and bad (“halva” semolina pudding that’s truly inedible), with coconut burfi (like coconut fudge) and another pudding in a glass – mango phirni – somewhere between. Kashmiri saffron/cardamom poached pear with ginger chai kulfi and peanut praline is a nice idea and looks good, too. Pity the pear – hero of this trio – had been cooked to the point of jelly-like disintegration.
Sauma is the flavour of disappointment. Rarely has style tasted so boring.
Address: 200 William Street, Northbridge, Perth
Phone: (08) 9227 8682 Web: sauma.com.au
Hours: Lunch Thu-Sun; dinner Tue-Sun
Typical prices: Smaller $15; curries $26; desserts $11
Summary: Style before substance
Stars: 2 out of 5
Source: The Australian, John Lethlean, 12th September 2015
Originally published as: Sauma, Perth: restaurant review
