Food Queen on Palki
Palki
Palki is an Indian restaurant located on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. The inside of the restaurant is modern and clean but still has traditional Indian touches. It was a lot nicer inside than a lot of Indian restaurants I’ve been to and it was the perfect atmosphere for a nice relaxing dinner.
The menu looked like a little book which I thought was cute. The menu was full of a variety of appetizers, tandoor specials and different meat and vegetarian curry dishes.
I love mangoes and fruity drinks so I started off by ordering a mango lassi. The mango lassi was my favourite part of the whole meal. I don’t mean that as any insult to the food because it was also good but I found this drink especially delicious. Burger Knight isn’t a huge fan of mangoes and he had one sip of mine and had to order one. The drink was sweet but it was offset by the tartness of the yogurt. I was told that they make their own yogurt in house and I definitely noticed a difference because it was deliciously thick and creamy. The mango flavor stood out which I liked because sometimes mango is gets over shadowed by other flavors. I highly recommend this drink.
For an appetizer we ordered chicken pakora. The boneless pieces of chicken were juicy and very large especially compared to other restaurants. The batter was crispy and light and they were served fresh and hot. We both really liked this dish and it was our favourite of the night.
The chicken was served with two dipping sauces. The green one is a mint cilantro sauce and the brown one is a sweet tamarind sauce. Both of the sauces were tasty and flavorful and it was hard to decide which one was better. I slightly preferred the mint cilantro sauce since its one of my favourite spices but the tamarind was so different it was hard to compare them.
Next up was the chicken tikka dish which was pieces of boneless chicken marinated in yogurt and Indian spiced and grilled in the tandoor. The flavor of the yogurt stood out in the chicken and the meat was moist. The plate comes out sizzling hot and I like the smokey flavor that cooking it in the tandoor adds to the meat.
For a curry dish we ordered the beef vindaloo at a medium level of spice. I don’t see tons of beef curry dishes on Indian menus so I was interested to try one. Vindaloo is my favourite type of curry sauce because it comes with potatoes and I like the tartness the vinegar in the sauce adds to the dish. I was surprised at how much meat was in the dish. The pieces of beef were soft and soaked up the yummy sauce nicely. The medium spice was a good balance and not overly spicy.
We also ordered some plain rice on the side to soak up the curry sauce. The rice was light and fluffy and its the perfect carrier for the extra curry sauce.
You can’t eat Indian food without ordering naan so we got an order of plain and an order of garlic. Above is a pictures of the plain naan. Call me boring but my favourite kind of naan is plain. Naan is already perfect so why mess with it by adding other things?
Burger Knight on the other hand preferred the garlic naan. Both of the naan were light and fluffy and had some nice crispy pieces on the outside from the tandoor.
Everything we ordered from Palki was fresh and tasted great. The service was very friendly and we both were thoroughly impressed with our meal. All of the dishes were good portion sizes for the price and we would come here again if we are ever in the area.
Recommendation:
Yes for authentic tasty Indian food in Vancouver.
Disclosure: I did not pay for my meal.
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