Discovery XL

For our fortieth discovery the regular discoverers were again reduced by half, but we decided to team up with another two family members for a 'taking it to the people' early discovery and car pickup. Our destination: Aangan in West Footscray. Initial contact was made at the Sherlock Holmes, over a Thunder Road Collingwood draught and a cider. The next stop was the 220 bus stop on Queen Street.

While in general I highly recommend you get on the bus, in retrospect I think that taking the train to West Footscray and then walking to Barkly Street would have been more efficient, and probably more fun. But eventually the bus did clear the city snarl and was happily bowling along Footscray Road. From Footscray station it was only a few minutes to our destination.

Aangan is rather bigger than I expected but at 6.00 pm it was still fairly quiet. We had taken the precaution of booking for five in case Mr 31 was able to join us, which meant that we enjoyed a more generously sized table than the standard offering for four, and two sets of pappadums. This was a nice bonus.

Lamb saag was shared among the carnivores, with tawa paneer and dal tadka to keep me happy. Aangan has so many paneer dishes on the menu that I felt obligated to try one. It arrived sizzling on the hot metal tawa, with onion, capsicum and mushroom. The dal was a good contrast: not too rich, nice and runny and pleasantly spicy. We also shared garlic naan (which is OK but I have to say I prefer plain naan, which doesn't interfere with the other flavours) and a filled naan with potato. Quite delicious for a treat, but the crispier texture of the plain or garlic naan would be preferred by many. Next time we should try a parantha perhaps.

Paneer, dal and naan

With the meal we enjoyed a Haywards 5000 or two (or three, in my case) making a grand total of 25,000. The girls were sensible and stuck to lassi. And gulab jamun.

The trip back to the sleeping city of Boroondara via the equally quiet streets of Sunshine was uneventful, and we were soon settled happily on the couch. Mr 31 was somewhat unhappy at missing out, as it was his suggestion to try Aangan after he had tasted their food at a street festival. Nevertheless he rang for an update and seemed pleased with our choices. We'll definitely go back as there is so much to choose from: Aangan has a wonderful array of vegetarian dishes. I'd recommend going with at least four people so you can sample a good range of flavours and textures. And Haywards.

 

Posted with Blogsy