Zeera, South Shields
South Shields,
NE33 2JQ
(0191) 456 1811
www.zeeracuisine.com
For some years now, Ocean Road in South Shields has had a reputation as a great destination for curry fans, thanks to its large number of mostly Indian restaurants lining both sides of the street. It has heritage in abundance; the north east's very first Indian restaurant, the Anglo Asian, opened here in 1958 and there’s been a cluster of restaurants here ever since.
With little personal experience of the South Shields curry scene, I decided to ask around and took to the internet in search of recommendations for restaurants to review. There was no shortage of recommendations, but one name that kept cropping up time and again was Zeera so we decided to take a closer look.
The auspices were rather good. Although the menu seemed a little light on veggie choices, Zeera boasted something which I haven’t found anywhere else – a specifically vegan menu featuring 5 hot starters, 3 salads and 6 main courses, plus a vegan thali and no less than 7 vegan wines.
The restaurant itself is modern and comfortable, with elegant furnishings, dark polished wood floors and dark wood tables. What light there was came mostly from pierced light shades which gave a slightly mottled and moody effect. Perhaps a little dark, especially with the heavy window shades reaching out over the pavement, but we were seated right by the window so not being able to see our food properly was never going to be an issue.
We dived straight into the menu, ordering Aloo Tikki and Chatri Cheese Tikki from the Exclusive starters menu, and my usual Onion Bhaji from the traditional starter menu. We then told the waiter that we’d be ordering our main courses from their vegan menu – which seemed to surprise him and we wondered if he’d realised there actually was a vegan menu. However, he had sufficient wits about him to quickly point out that the Onion Bhaji I’d ordered wasn’t the vegan version and did I want to swap it, which was encouraging.
When we came to ordering our mains, though, he seemed rather less certain, referring constantly to the menu to ensure he was getting it down right. Was he just new, or was this a rarely-visited part of the menu...?
We certainly couldn’t fault the starters. The Onion Bhaji arrived not as a ball but as a pair of thin, flat medallions of firm, chunky, well-flavoured onion accompanied by a delicious coriander chutney and a side salad that was genuinely fresh and zingy. I know what you're thinking, nobody ever eats the salad accompanying an Onion Bhaji because that's not what it's there for. But in this case absolutely everything was eaten and enjoyed.
The Aloo Tikki was equally delicious, light on the chilli but big on flavour, and the Chadri Cheese Tikki was also a revelation – a cast iron plate of sizzling mushroom, onion, pepper and roasted paneer which tasted as good as it looked, though the mushroom was perhaps rather firm and lightly-cooked, and we could have taken a little more chilli.
For our main courses, we ordered Adraki Gobi, which is cauliflower cooked in the Bhuna style with lots of ginger, Sambar Chana which features mixed vegetables blended with Zeera's combination of five dhals, and Kadai Sabzi, seasonal vegetables roasted in the tandoor then tossed in an aromatic sauce. These were accompanied by dishes of plain, vegetable and house pillau.
I desperately wanted to enjoy our main courses, especially the Adraki Gobi which sounded amazing. But everything suffered from being slightly under-cooked. Did I say slightly? No, the cauliflower was barely cooked - crunchy, chewy, evidently rapidly stir-fried and then immediately served. The taste of what was essentially raw cauliflower completely overwhelmed the spice mix, though the hot ginger managed to shine through.
The Kadai Sabzi was similarly heavily under-cooked and rather crunchy. I enjoy firm veg as it imparts greater flavour, but like the Adraki Gobi this almost raw. Was this the house style? If so, it wasn’t terribly pleasant. Likewise the blend of five dhals – what they call Pach Dahl – which they use to bind the Sambar Chana together was a little thick and glutinous but flavour-wise it was pretty good. Not a lot of vegetables but perhaps that was a plus point.
Overall, it was all a bit of a let down, frankly. Whether the waiter could sense our disappointment and this explained the unwelcome haste in which he cleared our table after we’d given up eating (he’d been hovering for a while) I don’t know, but it left us feeling more than ready to leave.
Given the sheer weight of recommendations and the extravagant praise otherwise heaped on Zeera, this is a restaurant that clearly does something right. Unfortunately, on the night we were there, that doesn't seem to extend to their vegan cuisine and the main course dishes in particular seemed to have been prepared by fairly inexpert hands and were rather disappointing.
So why is this? well, maybe they don't get asked for vegan food very often (if so, why do they even have a vegan menu?) or perhaps it's a new menu which the kitchen hasn't quite got to grips with yet. Or perhaps it was just an off-night in the kitchen (it happens).
I want to be generous, I really do. The starters were great, really well above average and I greatly admire their decision to offer a vegan menu. But I can't quite escape the nagging suspicion that Zeera have included a vegan menu simply to capitalise on veganism's current fashionability – but without properly understanding how to cook vegan food.
I did not set out to write hyper-critical reviews of our local restaurants, so I'm personally rather sad to have written this. Perhaps further experience will prove me wrong. I certainly hope so.
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