We popped into Kabalason one evening on a whim as we were passing. The last time we dined here was many years ago and we ate thali which was nice, but not amazing. I remember the flavours as being very strong and the spices a bit raw. Anyway, that was ages ago and last time we walked past Kabalason there were many people dining and we felt that it was worth another try.
We were quite early, and there was one other diner. A buffet was laid out under heat lamps, but our experience of buffet food is not good, so we decided to eat a la carte. The waitress did try to persuade us to have buffet ($24.50) but we wanted something freshly cooked and relatively light.
We chose chicken tikka, seekh kebab, cauliflower capsicum masala curry and two garlic naans.
The tikka was served with a limp looking salad and a mint yoghurt sauce. The meat was a bit tough and didn’t taste as if it had been freshly cooked. It tasted more like a part cooked tikka that had been warmed up, the flavour was okay, but the mouthfeel was dense and I have had much better tikkas.
The seekh kebab was better than the tikka, but again served with a limp salad that we didn’t touch. I suspect that the salad had been made up quite some time earlier and left in the fridge. The meat was nicely spiced, and a bit on the salty side, but a nice flavoured kebab.
The cauliflower capsicum masala started off okay, but as I ate more of it I found it quite strongly spiced, and the spices had a raw edge to them as if they had not been cooked through. One of the secrets of a great curry is to cook it long and slow so that the spices really get a chance to develop and lose their hot rawness. The first few spoonfuls were okay, but as I ate more, I found it salty, hot and overbearing and I left most of it.
The garlic naans were nicely flavoured but variable in texture. One was soft and a little doughy, but the better of the two. The other one was quite crisp and stiff, so I couldn’t wrap my curry in it.
So will I go back to Kabalason ? Probably not. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that they make a lot of food in advance for the buffet and then just reheat as required. Other than the naan nothing tasted really fresh and bright, and the constant throat-clearing and sneezing coming from the kitchen was quite off-putting. We spent over $60 on a very average meal.
Visit date – October 2019
Truly Scrumptious 
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