Gothamist literally stumbled into Raga a few weeks ago after a long night drinking and met Mr. Tony, a very friendly co-owner of the restaurant and the mastermind behind Mr. Tony's International Soul Kitchen.
It turns out that it's the ninth anniversary of the original soul kitchen, so to celebrate, every Tuesday starting Sept. 21, the restaurant, a well-kept East Village secret, is serving a family style prix fix menu of "eclectic international soul food" for $19.95, the year it all began. Dinner will be served from 6-11pm, followed by international soul sounds in the sultry downstairs lounge. The menu is here.
When it's not serving international soul food, Raga serves Indian-French fusion, which intrigued Gothamist so much that we had to make a return trip a few weeks later. Since Gothamist doesn't eat meat, much less wild boar (Raga's best-selling entree!), we brought a 3-person tasting panel along so that the menu could be sampled from widely.
And were we impressed! Not only was the service super-friendly and helpful, but the food was amazing. Everything was fresh, with surprising flavor combinations that were just what we needed. We started out with warm flatbread and assorted chutneys (including spicy-sweet apple-raisin and mango!), and moved on to beet carpaccio with goat cheese, super-fresh grilled spiced tiger prawns with gazpacho, and mussels in a spiced coconut-lemongrass sauce so good that we kept the extra sauce to dip our bread in. After a short breather, we moved on to the entrees.
The wild boar in a rendang curry sauce (above left), fell apart like roast beef and melted in our tasters' mouths. "Good comfort food!", they said. One panel member, who had stated in advance that she wouldn't be eating any boar that night, ended up finishing it from someone else's plate, saying it was "like a meat dessert!" (In response, we called her "a whore for boar".) Our tasters also liked the smoky tandoori chicken, which was served on a bed of red onions, and the "very fresh" salmon skewers. Both came with a light curried couscous studded with golden raisins, as did the vegetarian plate, which Gothamist loved--tamarind-grilled tofu, lotus-root salad, and an amazing eggplant-mushroom concoction.
Only one member of the tasting panel had consciously "saved room" for dessert; the rest of us lingered over the perfect creme brulee trio (chocolate mango, orange cardamom, lemongrass) and the warm chocolate souffle with raspberry mint sorbet. Although one taster had a "Peachy Lychee Martini", our group didn't really sample much from the restaurant's extensive cocktail menu -- we think the "Girl Scout" might have been a good match for the Chocolate Souffle. The wine list is fairly reasonable, with a broad range of choices, which our waiter helped us choose from -- who else would know what wine goes with boar?
The International Soul Kitchen will be featured every Tuesday night for the near future. We'll be the ones stuffing our face with gumbo & crabcakes.
Mr. Tony's International Soul Kitchen @ raga infusion bistro
433 E 6th street
212 388 0957
All photos by Nichelle Newsletter.
