Restaurant Review: NEW PUNJAB CLUB
February 15, 2020
The movie 2001 A Space Odyssey has an iconic scene in which an early hominid ancestor of man bludgeons a rival to death with a large bone and ecstatically throws it upward. It transforms into a spacecraft in heavenly flight. This is the bone, or its tenth-cousin-once-removed, that New Punjab Club turns into the best tandoori lamb you’ve ever eaten, in fact the best tandoori dish you’ve ever eaten, in fact one of the best things you’ve ever eaten.
2001 A Space Odyssey
It isn’t merely a chop, but the entire rib bone (a double bone, to be exact), extracted from the rib cage, trimmed scrupulously of all fat, with a large eye of tenderloin at the end. It’s thuggishly large and would be perfect for bludgeoning a rival or, say, an irksome neighbor. Tender, smoky, lamby but not gamey, it is brilliantly spiced, and magnificently charred (slightly beyond caramelization, but short of incineration) to the achingly elusive point of perfection. It hits you upside the head with its salty, juicy, meaty, carbonized flavor. This by itself warrants New Punjab Club’s one Michelin star. Served with potato mash and half a tandoori’d onion to help buffer the meat concussion, it sends you heavenward.
Tandoori lamb ribs. The picture, alas, doesn’t do justice. Smushed potatoes in a timbale and tandoori’d purple onion, skin on, just visible. Unbelievably delicious!
The New Punjab Club seems crafted by set designers, casting directors, and costumers and conjures a time when the British were overlords in India. At the door is a turbaned greeter. You, the customer, are among the Raj who, as is your right, are waited upon by deferential, stubbled waiters in uniform while you absorb iced gin against the heat and malaria and general ennui. It feels as if you’re in a play. It feels as if you should take up cricket. And were this the United States it feels as if the entire concept of this restaurant (which hearkens to a racist time and place) would get you in hot soup. But this is Hong Kong.
Your gin drink, from the gin trolley of course (how have you lived all your life without one?), is easily the best mixed-drink to be had in Hong Kong and possibly the greatest mixed-drink you’ve ever had in your life. To be honest, you’ve only had one of their mixed-drinks (and you haven’t had all the drinks in Hong Kong, though you’re working at it) but it’s so delicious you feel no need to try others. It’s a gin and tonic with a piece of dried grapefruit and kaffir lime leaves suspended above it on a long toothpick. They use a small torch to set the kaffir lime leaves on fire then quickly douse them in the gin thus releasing all their essential oils into the drink. The drink is chilled by transparent ice cubes (which take a lot of work or a fancy machine to make) for nothing less will do. They cost 178 HKD, about $23 US dollars. So what. Good medicine is expensive.
Perhaps the most delicious drink of your life. Amazingly delicious.
The food is richly detailed. A starting plate of peanuts is served warm atop a banana leaf, with a relish of minced scallions and jalapeno. There is a slice of lime to squeeze over. They’re fabulous. Maximally munchable.
There is a troika of chutneys, a jangling mint which is a perfect foil for the lamb, pineapple that you think is too sweet (but your wife loves), and a chili-onion chutney that pushes you right up against your capsaicin threshold and is fiendishly flavorful. You love it so much you eat it by itself.
Troika of chutneys, mint, pineapple, chili.
Your group loves the Keema Pau, spiced mutton, served with milk buns which are brioche-like, shellacked with ghee (you think), and perfectly toasted. The mutton is minced, sauced and sprinkled with deep-fried potato sticks, a delightful textural contrast. You put this on top of the milk bun slices and anoint with chutney or raita and eat like the sloppy-joes served in your junior high cafeteria. It’s heretical, you know, but you think it would be delicious on top of spaghetti.
Keema Pau
Milk buns
The Tandoori Gobhi, tandoori’d cauliflower, with raita and green mango, is as fine a cauliflower dish as you’ve ever had. Green mango is rarely seen outside Thai restaurants and so it’s nice to see it here.
Everyone at the table fights for the Dal Makhani, lentils stewed with fenugreek, a bomb-cyclone of flavor, and ideal with their perfectly cooked basmati rice and a spoon of their cooling raita handsomely jeweled with pomegranate seeds.
Dal Makhani
Raita
And everyone but you agrees that the the Saag Paneer — spinach, soft cheese, and garlic — is delish. Fuddled by demon rum (well, in this case, gin), you have no recollection of this dish at all. Could it be that your companions snarfed it all up before you had a chance to try it? Knowing them as you do, you wouldn’t put it past them.
Saag Paneer
Their Butter Naan are great, blistered and pliable, but the Paneer Kulcha are greater, stuffed with what you think is molten cottage cheese. You think that neither would be hurt by a pinch of fine sea-salt.
Butter Naan
Paneer Kulcha
Dessert, which few would accuse of subtlety, riffs sweet and salt, a pudding’y banana cake with popcorn ice cream and toffee sauce. Overwhelmed by the sweetness, you mildly like it. Overwhelmed by the sweetness, your wife adores it. Popcorn ice cream by itself would hold little interest for you. But played against the toffee it’s somehow just right.
This is food created by chefs within an internationalist restaurant group (Black Sheep) with an internationalist knowledge base, not just Indian. It allows New Punjab Club to bring ingredients and techniques to its cuisine (deep-fried potato sticks atop the Keema Pau, popcorn ice-cream) and details to its service (transparent ice cubes, a gin trolley) that few experienced Indian chefs or restaurateurs would likely know. It provides the boost that makes this restaurant so extra special.
Not convinced by the food? Then go for the loo, possibly the world’s best, which you wish you could duplicate in your own home. It’s all mirrored gold tile. Muted light. An intricate mirror. The moment you walk in a kind of monkish chant starts so as you wee you are induced to contemplate the meaning of life. Which surely involves another one of their gin and tonics with the kaffir lime leaf.
In the loo
As long as you can keep nicking coins from your children’s college funds, you’ll return again and again to this exceptional restaurant, New Punjab Club.
Rating (on a scale of 0 to 5)
Food: 4.5
Ambiance: 4.5
Service: 4.5
Overall Value: 4.5
Given the gushing review, you may wonder why this restaurant doesn’t receive all 5’s. The reason is that though it is truly terrific, remarkable really, it still doesn’t quite reach the high orbit of Little Kitchen (now shut), Amber (reformatted), or the transcendental Retaurant Floreyn in Amsterdam. Its lamb ribs do by themselves, but as a totality the restaurant resides half a notch below these exemplars of preternatural greatness. The restaurant is ever so slightly cramped. Sometimes the service feels unfocused as though the waiters are a bit jaded from repeating their lines too often. And there are no specials on the menu which suggests a kitchen that is template-bound, shy of taking risks. You can easily say though that out of the dozens of Indian restaurants you’ve visited in your life, including those in India, this is, by an order of magnitude, the best.
NEW PUNJAB CLUB
World Wide Commercial Building, 34 Wyndham St, Central, Hong Kong
+852 2368 1223