Doolally offers exceptional Indian food.
As I am now only reviewing restaurants that have pivoted into becoming takeaways, it’s getting interesting. What restaurants will I review? What cuisines will I go for? And can I do it on a reasonable budget? This week I decided to review a restaurant that I have eaten in twice and always had a great meal. So where did I choose? It was a pretty easy choice in the end. Being, very fond of Indian cuisine. I went to a restaurant I have eaten in a few times and that has just started to deliver.
Doolally opened last September in the Portobello area. With its main competitor, Pickle situated close by. Pickle is seen by many to be Dublin cities best Indian restaurant, and Doolally is aiming to take this crown. Doolally is owned by the press up entertainment group, and this means lots of money has been spent on it.
The most important thing in an Indian restaurant is its menu. Does it go with the reliable Korma’s, Madras’s and Vindaloos? Or does it offer something different? To get their menu right, Doolally hired Alfred Prasad as a food consultant. He oversaw the menu and the chefs. Alfred has won a Michelin star as the executive chef of the Tamarind Collection in London. So, you know that you will get an interesting vibrant menu with a few nice surprises thrown in.
Pulling up the Deliveroo app on my phone I went straight for Doolally. Once their menu popped up I chose something I have always eaten when I have been there, Butter Chicken. I normally like my curries to be spicy and I noticed you had the option to make it extra spicy. This was an option that I never had when I had eaten in Doolally, and I was looking forward to it.
Butter Chicken aka Murg Makhani is a chicken dish in a mildly spiced tomato sauce. The Doolally version has chicken tikka in a fragrant creamy tomato sauce with fenugreek leaves. Chicken tikka main ingredients are yoghurt and chicken. Something a fussy eater like me doesn’t like eating but it adds something to this dish. My butter chicken came with basmati rice, poppadoms and I ordered a portion of plain naan bread.
The food arrived pretty quickly via the Deliveroo app which allowed me to track it. Which is handy as I had asked to have my order left outside the gate of my apartment complex. In these days of lockdown, the fewer people you interact with the better. The food came packaged rather neatly showcasing that this was no ordinary takeaway.
So how did the butter chicken curry taste? Well ordering it extra spicy gave it a nice kick which I love and it tasted perfect to me. The basmati rice was fluffy and was perfect for the curry.
I have always rated Doolally’s naan bread as the best I have had in Dublin and this was no exception. The naan bread I ordered kept up to this high standard.
The typical poppadom is normally disc-shaped, but these were shaped like twisted nachos. They also tasted oh so good, especially with the mango chutney dip that came with it.
Overall the food was just as expected, and the packaging was good too. The delivery was nice and quick and thanks to Deliveroo it was easy to track too. However, there was one thing that slightly annoyed me, and that was the cost. €19.95 for my curry, and €3.45 for my plain naan bread. A delivery fee of €3..49 and a service fee of €0.49 brought it up to €27.88 before adding my tip. Surely, a restaurant that is only doing takeaways, should have a 15% to 25% discount. Why should you be paying the same price as a sit-in customer? Especially as they now have fewer overheads because of Lockdown.
Besides my minor gripe about the cost, the food was lovely and I would highly recommend it. The menu is interesting and the naan bread is to die for.
Doollaly
Ground Floor,
The Lennox Building,
47-51 South Richmond Street,
Dublin 2
More restaurant reviews can be seen here.