Paratha King, Dubai - Not Quite Fit For A King

Most countries tend to use more rice than flour, or vice versa. India is one of the few countries who seem to be happily obsessed with using both as often as they can, sometimes even on the same plate! When you consider rice dishes like biryani or mandi, and then think about delicious sub-continental breads such as naan or roti, I think there is definitely room at the table for all the different carbohydrates. I am an efficient person, so I try to pack as many types of carbs into a single meal as I possibly can. It just saves time.

And so I found myself at Paratha King, trying to decide between all the various stuffed parathas and rice dishes on their very, very, very, very long menu. I think I've mentioned before that I get intimidated by unnecessarily long menus. I swear some places just write up every single conceivable combination of their ingredient base and give each combo a different name. Why not just take 'The Pizza Hut Approach'? Just list all the available bits and pieces, and let the customer choose what they want to have stuffed into their particular dish. I mean let's face it, a stuffed paratha is the Indian answer to the pizza, since just about anything can be safely shoved into one, dipped in sauce, and devoured by people who often don't care what they are eating at 4am.

But this was 2pm, so I felt like my dining decision should be a little more carefully thought out. Feeling a little overwhelmed, I asked for one of whichever the most popular spicy paratha was on the menu. "Hara Bhara Paratha" was the answer, and so that musical sounding recommendation became my lunch for the day. The Hara Bhara paratha sounded good on the menu board, stuffed with pieces of spinach, green onion, sesame seeds, diced chilli and even some tiny bits of potato. Good to see they hadn't forgotten Ireland's favourite carbohydrate either.

One nice addition was the 'salad bar', although that's not an accurate description of the stuff that was on offer... chic pea 'chana' curry, daal, sour pickle, chillies, yoghurt, raw onions and a number of other little extras were all laid out inside a sterile-looking stainless steel counter. Sounds good so far.

My paratha was delivered on a plastic lunch tray, with little indents for the extra stuff which I happily piled on. Nothing like a brightly coloured meal to make me hungry!

The paratha itself was dry and bland, with no measurable degree of spice. The strongest flavour came from the tiny bits of mashed spinach, which were fresh enough, but apart from that, the whole paratha was just a tasteless lump. It was overdone to the point of slight charring on one side, while the other side felt a little bit like play dough. The side dishes were a mixed bag - The chana was forgettable; a bit spicy, but as salty as the Dead Sea. The daal was passable; a little watery, but definitely a step up from the chana. Chillies were old and soft, onions were crisp and fresh, plain yoghurt was thick and fresh, while the mint yoghurt was warm and watered down. Why the hell does one location have such enormous variation of quality between such simple things as side dishes?!

The insides of the paratha looked good, but were almost tasteless.

OK, relax. What do we do when we start to get mad? We pump ourselves full of sugar, of course. That's what I needed, a dose of good ol' fashioned sweetener. It always makes things better.

I ordered my favourite Indian dessert, Galub Jamun, which are essentially just little balls of vanilla cake batter which are deep fried and then drowned in a bath of sugar syrup where they stay until sold. What could possibly go wrong? It even looked great when it arrived at my table. It was only when I punctured it with my spoon that I discovered the problem - They had almost microwaved them to death. The good people in the kitchen had taken two otherwise perfectly innocent little lumps of galub jamun and stuck them inside a thousand watt microwave oven for a bit too long, which reduced their already-tender insides to a molten, sticky pulp of tongue-searingly sweetness. I would have preferred them to be served the same way 99% of sweet shops sell these things - at room temperature. They were still edible, but only after I blew on them for about the same length of time as a 102 year old man with an iron lung would spend extinguishing the candles on his birthday cake.

AVERAGE

Between the bewildering menu, the saddened paratha and salad bar offerings which ranged from okay to bad, I was not exactly impressed by Paratha King. Maybe the Hara Bara Paratha was not in fact their most impressive dish. I have to say that after I had placed my order, I sat and watched a number of other various dishes emerge from the kitchen, all of which looked better than the lethargic lump that I had to contend with. It's that promise of potential, thanks to the endless menu variety which kind of makes me want to go back again at some stage, just to dig through a few more different things, and see if it gets any better. I'm not always an optimist, but in this case I think it's a safe bet that it could only improve, which is why this place just scrapes into the Average category.


UPDATE: I did in fact make another trip over to the patriarch of the paratha, and ordered something as different as possible, in the interests of giving them a fair go. I went with the hyderabadi biryani, vegetarian obviously. It was a colourful pile of bright green rice and fried shredded onions, covering a smaller, slightly mushy pile of various other vegetables. The rice was fresh and fluffy, and the veggies had about as much flavour as a vegetarian dish could expect to muster without being garnished with a leg of lamb. It was filling, tasty enough, and improved my view of Paratha King on the whole. That said - it was a lot more expensive than other, better biryanis found in Dubai, and the side dish salad bar setup was identical to my last visit, with the same mix of hit-and-miss dishes that amount to very little.
I now happily rate this as a solid 'Average' based on both times I have been to the restaurant.

The bill (for 1):
1 x Hara Bhara Paratha - 14 Dhs
1 x Galub Jamun - 6 Dhs
1 x Chai Tea - 3 Dhs
TOTAL: 23 Dhs (Approx. US$6)

Second visit bill (for 1): 
1 x Hyderabadi Biryani - 18 Dhs
TOTAL: 18 Dhs (Approx US$5)

Restaurant address: Internet City, Building 12, Dubai

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