Monsoon is an Indian restaurant located on the busy Melbourne Street cafe strip. Their regular menu is fairly extensive with all your Indian favourites as well as some dishes that I’ve never heard of. Not feeling too hungry, I came here for their $10 lunch menu which is a choice of 7 different curries with rice.

The restaurant has a nice wide frontage, with floor to ceiling windows that allow plenty of natural light in. The decor is modern and contemporary with good use of earthy colour tones. This place just had a cosy relaxed vibe about it.

For lunch, I ordered the Lamb Rogan Josh. The meal came out 15 minutes after ordering and was average in presentation. This is not the first time I’ve been to an Indian restaurant for a cheap lunch deal, and I was not surprised to only count 5 morsels of meat on my plate.

I expected the lamb to be soft and tender, instead it was tough and chewy. The only way to break the meat apart was with the use of a knife. I suspect the curry was a fresh batch that hadn’t been cooked long enough. The meat was reasonably lean, although a few thin layers of fat were clearly visible. The sauce could have had a thicker consistency, however, the flavours were just right.

From the surface, the rice looked well cooked with nice individual grains, but underneath, there was a pool of water. I almost thought I was drinking a soup. The water was initially clear, but then developed an orange tinge once mixed with the curry sauce.

The staff were friendly and the service was good. The atmosphere was relaxed and their lunch time menu is reasonably priced. The meal, I thought, wasn’t so great. Perhaps it’s a matter of you get what you pay for.

WHERE: 135 Melbourne St, North Adelaide