Chandani in Woodstock

We're fans of Indian food, and rather than head­ing off to town to eat at Bukhara's — which, incid­ent­ally, has recently had a fire (we learned as much when try­ing to book a table) where the plush décor is a pre-sentiment of the bill that fol­lows, even if the food is sup­posed to be indes­crib­ably good — we spot­ted Chandani's in Woodstock whilst leaf­ing through the Time-Out (rather obvi­ously, we don't get out much!).

The added bene­fit of book­ing a table at Chandani's was that their meat is all halaal and there are a lot of veget­arian options on the menu, since we were din­ing with someone who was fast­ing for Ramadan, who wouldn't have taken lightly to dis­cov­er­ing that his first meal of the day was going to be severely restric­ted because the kit­chen hadn't con­sidered his needs ...

I'm also a fan of Woodstock and hadn't gone there at night. Roodebloem Avenue, des­pite its day­time shab­bi­ness, is alive with a num­ber of eat­er­ies, with names like 'Jamaica me Crazy' and even on a Tuesday even­ing was vibey, so week­ends must be com­pletely abuzz.

Chandani Restaurant is co-owned by a Jagdish Vanzara and Dina de Bruyn, who have done up a typ­ical little Woodstock jewel with pieces from Mumbai. It's like step­ping into another coun­try once indoors, and the atmo­sphere, even dur­ing the week, which should have been a slow night, was authen­tic and relaxed.

The eat­ing areas are divided up amongst rooms and ver­andahs which makes for more intim­ate and mel­low din­ners and moves away from the staid format of large areas thick with tables, which most res­taur­ants follow.

The food was simply stun­ning. The menu was extens­ive, offer­ing chef's spe­ci­al­it­ies, veget­arian, chicken and meat options, an array of accom­pa­ny­ing rice vari­ations, and breads like naan and rotis. The food was fra­grant, the por­tions gen­er­ous and the prices fair (if you don't fall prey to numer­ous delect­able side orders of veget­ables and rice), whilst the desserts were par­tic­u­larly yummy.

We skipped starters and headed dir­ectly on to the main meal, choos­ing Palak Goscht (lamb done in a spin­ach sauce), Murg Amratsari (chicken in a tomato base with cashew and ses­ami seeds) and Murg Palak (chicken in a spin­ach sauce). All of these were simply heav­enly and beau­ti­fully presen­ted in little sil­ver bowels. We added gar­lic infused naan to the com­bin­a­tion and enjoyed ourselves immensely. We fol­lowed this with sogi (a sweet semo­lina pud­ding), gajar halwa and a sweet lassi.

The south­ern sub­urbs is starved of good Indian food and, whilst Woodstock is so close to the City bowl it may as well be in town, it still shaves off travel time, and get­ting there along the M3 is pretty effort­less. The food at Chandani was excep­tional and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. One of the high­lights is that the heat of the food is con­trolled entirely by you, the cus­tomer, except for the mild dishes, which are appar­ently a little dif­fi­cult to make hot (under­stand­ably, I wasn't too con­cerned by this as 'mild' is about as hot a curry as I can stand).

Return we will.

Contact Details:
Chandani – 85 Roodebloem Avenue, Woodstock, Cape Town
Telephone: 021 447 7887
Website: http://www.chandani.co.za

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