A new Indian restaurant has opened its doors in Goodwood along King William Road.

Previously home to Italian restaurant, Assaggio, Javitri is serving up modern style dishes you can’t experience anywhere else.

The interior of the restaurant also helps you settle into the modern, elite feeling of a fine dining experience.

The chefs at Javitri like to introduce western ingredients and cooking techniques to their dishes while keeping the traditional Indian cuisine the core focus, to give customers the best culinary experience.

The Green Pea, Spinach and Granola Tikki was both a beautiful and delicious vegetarian dish. Tikki is a small patty or croquette, which was made with tandoori cottage cheese, sweet yoghurt, pea powder, cranberry and ginger chutney and included a tamarind pipette. This dish had a lovely sweet balance to the savoury components. The cranberry and ginger chutney was beautifully sweet and complimented the cheese, which was light and not too overpowering. The crunchy granola was a lovely unexpected additive, which complimented the pea powder perfectly, giving it more of a savoury flavour. It also had a spiced coating, which was a lovely combination. The sauce on the plate was spicy and added a slight kick to the overall dish while the tamarind pipette was sweeter to balance the flavours and make sure nothing was too strong. Overall, the dish has a lovely array of textures and flavours and a delicious balance of aromatic spices.

The Southern Indian Crab Cakes were made with blue swimmer crab, mango chutney, cucumber, puffed lentil chat (raw fruit and vegetables mixed together with spices) and beetroot-cumin coulis, all coated in crispy panko crumbs. The spice in the lentil chat leaves a slight heat in your mouth, but not too much that leaves you reaching for water. The chat paired well with the sweeter chutney to balance the flavour and to help cool the palate, while the fresh crab was prominent in flavour and definitely the hero of the dish. The crunchy coating with the beautiful soft, smooth centre was a lovely texture balance. It was quite a small dish, but packed full of flavour.

The Lamb Three Ways was: a dukkah spiced tandoori lamb chop, a lamb seekh kebab and a lamb and mint tiki; all paired with saffron tomato upma (a type of thick porridge, prepared with dry roasted semolina and vegetables). The chop was beautiful and tender and fell straight off the bone. It was full of flavour with the lovely aromatic spices that coated the skin and seeped into the juicy meat. The kebab was similar to a sausage in looks but was much more soft and tender in consistency, which held quite deep lamb flavours. The seekh kabab was very rich in flavour and from the small bit of meat; you could tell there was a big process behind the scenes. The tikki had a drier spice rub coating with an array of spices. These weren’t hot but gave the tikki plenty of flavour. The upma was light and freshened the palate from the mainly meaty dish, softening the rich earthy tones and balancing the overall meal.

Lamb Shank Korma was presented beautifully. I didn’t want to dig in as I thought it looked too good, but in the end my stomach won me over and I was not disappointed. Made with spinach, rasin masala freekeh (a traditional cereal), lamb fritter, coconut snow, truffle ghee and topped with sweet potato crisps, the dish was packed with flavour. The shank fell off the bone and was beautifully juicy and tender. The yoghurt based curry held some spice that did hold on the tongue, however it wasn’t overpowering and was just the perfect amount to keep you going back for more. The fritter balanced the spices and the textures, with its crunchy outer coating and softer centre, while the sweet potato crisps also added a crunchy texture element and gave a sweeter flavour to the meal, balancing the entire savoury and spicy flavours.

For dessert we had the Chocolate Tsunami. Now from that name alone it is hard to resist. A dark chocolate, fennel and orange brownie; a milk chocolate, coconut, poppy seed cigar; a white chocolate pan kulfi (frozen dairy dessert) with Nutella kalakand lukmi (a sweet cake prepared with milk solids and sugar with a fried short dough); and a chocolate rabdi (condensed milk based dish). The brownie held a nutty flavour, which was lovely and gooey in the centre, while the fennel gave off a strong liquorice flavour. The cigar wrapping was similar to the thin crispy crust of a spring roll, but with a sweet flavour. The coconut inside with the chocolate was beautiful and rich in flavour. The lukmi was sweet and full with Nutella. Yum! The flaky pastry shell was light and not overly sweet which balanced with the Nutella. The rabdi was semi sweet and was served in a shot glass as a drink to accompany the other chocolate dishes.

Every dish was wonderfully presented and executed. If you are a lover of taking pictures of your food before eating it like we are, this is definitely the place to visit, judging on the presentation alone.

It is evident that a lot of thought goes into each dish to execute the wonderful plating techniques.

We also loved that the menu also featured a glossary at the back; with explanations of all the traditional Indian words used, so we didn’t have to keep asking the waiter: ‘excuse me… what does this mean?’

Javitri treated us with a wonderful explosion of colour and flavour, nothing like you have experienced before.

Open Tuesday to Wednesday: 5:00-9:30pm and Thursday to Sunday: 11:30am-2:30pm and 5:00-9:30pm

Words by Cyndal King

WHERE: 92-94 King William Rd, Goodwood