Water Lily
90 – 166 Meadowood Dr
204-255-2973
I’ve never
eaten at Water Lily. This tiny strip
mall restaurant has seating for very few and the times we tried to get in, we
were sadly turned away. Regardless, that
doesn’t mean that we are stumped about eating some of the best Indian food in Winnipeg
Most
everyone I know starts with naan but the last thing I want to do is fill up on
bread before an Indian meal. I love
Indian so much, I value every centimetre of my stomach space. Admittedly, Lily’s naan is very hard to turn
down. The garlic naan comes absolutely
stuffed with huge chunks of garlic—unless you have a lot of vampire blood in
your lineage, you can’t help but love this starter. The same goes with the onion naan, both of
which ensures that no one wants to come close to your breath.
People
often start with samosas as well. Add
one of these monster dumplings to your stomach and you could almost be done for
the day. The vegetable stuffing delivers
a nice punch of curry and crunch. As
much as I like eating the crispy, deep fried edges, I need to save room for the
main dishes.
When dining
with a group, you would normally order a number of dishes and share. By myself, I would spend hours agonising
which dish I want since I love them all so much. Enter the buffet where five plates later, you
groan in agony and your belt lies shattered on the floor. Biryani is a nice alternative that blends and
spices the rice dish for you. You can
pick whatever meat you want in your biryani and the deluxe chicken biryani
comes with big chunks of plain chicken, as well as Tandoori chicken. The rice tastes richly spiced and raisins add
a zing of sweetness. A hard-boiled egg
is just a lovely bonus to get with this dish.
Among our
favourite dishes, the palak paneer comes with massive cubes of cottage
cheese. This dense spinach dish doesn’t
have a lot of cream, which often happens with palak. Lily’s version has a bit more heat than what
I normally see, which is another bonus.
The deep
and rich korma chicken also features gigantic cubes of chicken, swimming in a
cream sauce. Again, raisins add a touch
of sweetness and cashews give crunchy texture to this divine concoction.
The butter
chicken comes in a similar cream sauce, jazzed up with tomato. The resulting orange coloured sauce has an
added dimension of deliciousness. The
sauce tastes good enough to eat on its own; the chicken is just a perk. Once more, the chicken pieces are huge. To avoid being repetitive, let’s just say
that all the dishes come with huge pieces of meat. If you cut into the chicken, you can see that
it’s been pre-spiced and cooked (possibly Tandoori)—talk about layers of
flavour!
If you
don’t like hot foods, cream-based sauces are always good selections. The richness of the cream cuts into the
chilli so you rarely leave with flames in your mouth. If a fiery tongue is what you want, the
vindaloo should satisfy you. Our lamb
selection tastes wonderful, but they’re a little hard. They would be a bit more tender if they were
taken out of the heat earlier, or left in
the simmer for a while longer. The
sauce has so much spicing that you can chew on the chunks of coriander and
cardamom.
You can
also chew on the wealth of spices in the curry beef. Here you have the added pleasure of savouring
pieces of onion, ginger and basil. These
flavours soak so well into the cubed beef that you can’t help over-indulging.
Although I
love eating out, there’s something to be said for ordering in and staying in
your expandable sweat pants! Someday,
we’ll time it well enough to actually get a seat in the restaurant (or have the
good sense to make reservations!). Until
then, the take out carries us through until the next time.
****½ /5
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