So, the King likes curry?

Most Malaysians would probably know that our royal families are never too shy to sell things. The royal families have been known to sell anything from Datukships to land rights to lumber rights. Basically, anything they can get their hands on, they’d sell. Anything.

If they were eBay sellers, they’d be Power Sellers at this stage although I’d suspect their feedback rating wouldn’t be anywhere close to 100%!

So, it didn’t come as a surprise to me when I saw that some of them were involved in selling curries in the Irish capital. Well OK, not just curries but a whole host of Indian and Pakistani cuisine.

Tuanku suka kari iye...?

To the less eagle-eyed ones out there, the poster on the door reads:

IF ITS GOOD ENOUGH for the Malaysian royal family... That's right - Madina's not just popular with bargain-hunting Irish fans of Asian cuisine, it also meets the standards of visiting monarchs. ("Very modest people" according to our source.)Granted, the fact that they have a giant Dubliner review in the front window doesn't hurt our impression of Adi Hameed's family's enterprise. But even more impressive is it's combination of value and authentic taste - we can't stay away. It's common to find Adi mingling with customers, but not in a showy way. This is just a guy who loves his food. Try mother Ishrat's Moongi Dal (€8.95) or any of the melt-in-the-mouth lamb dishes.

Seriously, I was quite surprised that Madina Restaurant had put up a blown-up version of a review of the restaurant on their front door especially one that refers to Malaysian royalty. I didn’t realise Malaysia’s royalties were such distinguished food connoisseurs!

To be fair to the restaurant, as he review states, it does serve up the most authentic tasting Indian food in Dublin, at one of the cheapest prices to boot. It’s also probably the only place in Dublin that sells decent South Indian food like pratha and dosa (or roti canai and tosai) that are firm favourites with most Malaysians.

For some reason however, the place has fallen victim to what other Indian restaurants suffer from: making their food milder presumably, to suit local tastes. Hopefully, the owners see the error of their ways and correct this problem before they start losing their reputation for authenticity as well as their client-base.

Note to the non-Malaysian: It wasn’t a typo when I typed “families”. I didn’t mean to type family because in Malaysia, we’re a bit more generous to our feudal lords. Yes, we have multiple royal families. Nine to be exact. Hey, why stick with the one when you can have nine, eh? After all, if there was only one royal family a la the UK, we’d soon enough run out of tabloid fodder and all sorts of scandals...