REVIEW: Annapurna is still on top

What do you look for when you head out for some food on a Saturday night?

I don’t mean the candlelit table-for-two night, but a get-together with friends and family night.

Personally, I want the surroundings to be unobtrusive and the service to be good, but top of the line, I hope the food will be great, or at the very least leaves everyone satisfied.

The Annapurna Gurkha Restaurant does this and has become something of a favourite with those in the know in Kirkcaldy.

I wish I had the gastronomic expertise to say whether it lives up to its promise of offering authentic Nepalese and Indian cuisine but I can confirm it serves up some of the tastiest ethnic food in town.

There are no eye-watering onions turned neon with red food dye, too-sweet chutney or mouth-burning chilli dips. Instead there’s a complexity of flavours and lightness of touch that makes them very moreish.

The starters include everything you would expect, from onion bhaji to pakora, but there’s also mouth-watering Khursani Kukhura – marinated chicken pan-fried with peppers, garlic and chilli – and Lakeside Fish, cooked with spices, crushed mustard, lemon juice and ginger.

I plumped for the vegetable samosa and, rather than the triangular deep-fried parcels, the Annapurna’s version of two pyramid-shaped samosa, one balanced atop the other, certainly had dramatic impact.

Elsewhere around the table, thumbs up were given for the Piro Kukhura (chicken cooked with peppers, onions and yoghurt), vegetable pakora, prawn puri and seekh kebab.

For my main dish, I picked Macchi Pokhari, a delicious dish of large chunks of tender white fish cooked in a sauce of Nepalese spices, mustard, ginger, fresh herbs and yoghurt.

It had been a few years since I’d eaten at the Annapurna Gurkha, but on the results of this night, it won’t be long before I’m back.