I have written about Indian food before, and I will inevitably write about Indian food again. I had never even heard of Indochinese food until the day before yesterday and I never thought I'd want to eat it, let alone write about it, but I guess the world works in mysterious ways.
To be clear, I am a lover of both Chinese and Indian food. But together? It gives me slightly sweaty palms when I think about it. I can't ever imagine soy sauce and poppadums being happy bedfellows. It sounds more like a recipe for general disaster and soiled bedsheets if you ask me. And yet there are potentially happier and intriguing couples like paneer and Sichuan pepper. Maybe there is something to it after all.
Currently I am one half (you can guess which) of either a "Blasian" or, depending on your perspective on my family history, a "Chindian" couple. These might sounds like offensive racial slurs, but really they are a well-meaning catchphrase for something a bit odd. They are, really, the Indochinese cuisine of relationship statuses i.e. they sound horrid and probably shouldn't work, but there is definitely some good in there if you find the right combo.
This is all to say that maybe mixing up two things which haven't historically gone together isn't a bad thing. In fact, it is probably a very good thing. Anyone with five minutes and access to Google will tell you (depending on where they are from) that pasta is actually originally Chinese or noodles are originally from Italy. Mixing cultures and cuisines has created some pretty wonderful things. In fact, let's be fair, most of what we consider "traditional" food is something your great great grandfather would have thought of as some horrendous new-fangled abomination and an affront to his "traditional" food. I mean, the English wouldn't even be drinking tea if it wasn't for some action in the mixing bowl of history.
Which brings me to Kailash Parbat, ostensibly the Hong Kong outpost of a global Indian restaurant chain, doing classic "pure veg" Indian, but, as it turns out, with some dark secrets lurking underneath. Before we get to the underbelly, we should start at the start. Kailash Parbat is, on first inspection, a rarity in Hong Kong, a non-grubby and non-chintzy Indian restaurant in Hong Kong. This was pleasing to me as usually they are grubby (but, in fairness good, like Branto) or chintzy and oddly stereotypical ("Bombay Dreams", "Tandoori Nights" etc etc). Sometimes you want one of those two horrors, but if you're like me, you'd often rather have neither. So, happily, this place looked clean, modern and, dare I say it, reasonably authentic. That is, assuming your idea of authentic is a very serviceable and bright mid-range lunch canteen and not somewhere with gold drapes called the "Taj Mahal" and a man in the corner doing the nodding/shaking his head thing.
We started firmly on the streets of India, with a decent pav bhaji, which is basically bread with a warming spiced tomato-y sauce for dunking, and a couple of other snacky type dishes. Unfortunately I can't say more, because it was a little while ago and, to be honest, I've forgotten what we had. I can say, though, that I remember being very content, both at the quality and price of the food and at the fact we were surrounded by South Asian families enjoying themselves at other tables, meaning clearly my positive judgements were shared by others who have had the proper stuff more than I have.
We then unknowingly entered the dark side and were served a chilli paneer, which, until the day before yesterday, I had no idea how to describe. Thanks to the newspaper, I now understand that this was "Indochine" food and not the fault of a temporary relief chef from Shenzhen who got confused and threw soy sauce on our order. As it turns out, adding soy sauce to Indian dishes has been a thing for a small section of Chinese/Indian (Chindian!) society for a while. I'll admit that, at the time, I didn't really like it, but a very large part of me now wants to deep dive back in and appreciate it in all its mixed race cultural glory. Maybe I just needed to label it properly to be able to feel comfortable.
So if you want to try a good version of traditional Indian fare alongside something new, head here. On the strength of the traditional stuff alone it has snuck into second place on my list of places I will enjoy eating proper Indian food in Hong Kong (interesting fact, there are only two places), and also occupies the sole recommendation for Indochinese adventures. Go on, try it, you might just like it.