Indo-Chinese food has a long and storied history, dating as far back as the 1700s, when Chinese immigrants arrived in Kolkata, fleeing civil war in China and bringing with them a host of new spices and ingredients from home.
And so, a whole fusion cuisine was born, as well as India’s first Chinatown, with noodles meeting curry and five spice mashed up with garam masala. To celebrate this meeting of minds, Bundobust has prepped some new menu items which will be available all summer.
So as a failsafe favourite in the city, the MEN has little choice but to head down to check them out. First for the familiar - Bundo’s now iconic okra fries, the dish that has single-handedly changed views on the divisive vegetable since the restaurant opened its doors in Leeds in 2014.
Messing with a classic is clearly dangerous. Foolhardy, at best. But trusting in the fact that everyone loves salt & pepper chips from the local Chinese chippy, perhaps this isn’t such a maverick move after all.
While the astringent vibe of the mango powder is absent, the salt & pepper okra fries, layered with soy-soaked peppers, onions, chilli and a sweet-salty seasoning liberally covering the crispy shards of okra, this is a total winner. In fact, there’s an argument for installing them permanently, offering people the choice of the original, or the Indo version.
Next up, the Hakka noodles. These soft egg noodles are stir fried with Indo-Chinese spices, peppers, mushroom and white cabbage, before being doused in soy. They’re delicious, fearsome-looking red chillies just adding a pleasing warmth rather than being a full take-your-face-off situation.
A slight duff note - a genuine rarity at Bundobust - is the Tofoo 65, a shame considering it looked the strongest contender on paper. Fingers of Malton Company’s Tofoo are fried with five spice, curry leaves, ginger, garlic, fermented red chilli and mustard seeds.
They’re then coated in a ‘reimagining’ of the famous ‘65’ sauce, which first originated in the renowned Hotel Buhari in Chennai in 1965. You’ll often see versions of the 65 sauce in South Indian restaurants, usually coupled with a deep fried cauliflower or chicken, in a similar style to your classic sweet and sour.
Here though, the crispy-chewy final result is missing, and the tofu fingers end up gooey in the sauce. Maybe a drier tofu is needed, or a second fry to make them super crisp before they’re rolled around in the 65. It still all gets eaten, however. So there’s that.
But the real winner here is the ‘Gobi Toast’, a veggie take on prawn toast, with minced cauliflower, garlic and ginger painted onto brioche-esque ‘pav’ soldiers, before being deep fried with sesame seeds. They’re dipped into a sweet, spicy coconut korma sauce, and gone in an instant.
They also perform some kind of miraculous mind trick, somehow conjuring the flavour of prawn toast, despite the lack of crustaceans. It must be that association between fried bread and sesame. Either way, these are superbly good.
Served up to the usual mix of psych-out Indian movie scores and Afrobeat at the Bundo branches on Piccadilly and Oxford Road, the Indo Chinese menu will be available until August 29.
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