Dining Out: Kathā on Preston Street makes a persuasive case for Indian fine dining

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Kathā

225 Preston St., Unit 3, 613-265-6444, kathaottawa.com
Open: Tuesday to Saturday 5 to 11 p.m., closed Sunday, Monday
Prices: Tasting menu $100, wine pairing $50
Access: Ramp to front door

In late August, I visited Vivaan on Preston Street, with high expectations for elevated Indian fare. Happily, the butter chicken and chicken biryani were as delicious and wow-inspiring as they were when I tried them soon after Vivaan opened in late 2020.

But on this summer night, Vivaan’s young chef-owner Teegavarapu Sarath Mohan said to me words that no restaurant-lover wants to hear; he would soon close Vivaan, he mentioned, and those best-in-Ottawa dishes would no longer be available.

On the much brighter side, Mohan said he would soon open a new restaurant, Kathā, in Vivaan’s place. Why? Kathā means “story” in Sanskrit, he explained, and the new restaurant would allow him and his chefs to tell fresh, modern culinary stories via novel tasting menus, themselves serving guests dishes that would refract Indian flavours and dishes through a fine-dining lens.

Mohan decided to take the plunge with Kathā, while visiting India this summer, following his recent wedding. Travelling to Mumbai, he ate at Masque, whose fine-dining successes had won it the designation as India’s best restaurant.

“I thought we could really pull this off,” Mohan told me. “Somehow we’ll manage to come up with a menu.”

Mohan, who is in his early 30s, hides his ambitiousness behind an easy, soft-spoken demeanour. But in the last six years, the former tech worker and food blogger — who is self-taught as a chef — has pursued a steep culinary trajectory at restaurant after restaurant that impressed me. First, he ran the kitchen at Flavours of Kerala in Kanata in 2017. Less than two years later, he opened NH 44, an east-end Ottawa eatery that served his take on Indian street food. Then came the fancier Vivaan. Now, the fancier-still Kathā wants to make the case for Indian fine dining, a relative rarity in global culinary circles.

In early October, almost a month after Kathā opened, we sat at its chefs’ counter and tried its inaugural 10-item menu, which at $100 is markedly cheaper than many other tasting menus in Ottawa, and which can be fully ordered with vegan options. We were thoroughly knocked out by our well-paced meal.

After we enjoyed intriguing cocktails (a tamarind whisky sour, a lychee martini) made by Mohan himself, we received two amuse-bouche-like starters.

One dish held a small piece of fried pork, which riffed on chicken 65, the popular and boldly spicy deep-fried appetizer found in many Indian restaurants. Kathā’s pork version was more crisp and mild than its sometimes mouth-singing inspiration, while tamarind pearls, yogurt pearls, mint chutney and especially a betel leaf spruced things up.

Even better was a crisp white tapioca papadam, colourfully dotted with persuasively flavoured chutneys and a dollop of onion jam. This simple but striking snack highlighted flavours from different regions of India, while the bulk of the menu, we were told, would lean on South Indian inspirations, as that’s where Mohan and most of his chefs are from.

Neither item was all that spicy, and we wondered if Kathā’s take on fine dining would involve toning down pungencies and mouth-warming flavours. We shouldn’t have worried, though, as our dinner’s savoury progression grew increasingly spicier, although not to an extreme level.

Next came beef tartare, along with a story about the minimal consumption of beef in India, with exceptions such as beef dry fry, an appetizer native to the South Indian tropical state of Kerala. Kathā’s beef tartare, garnished with dots of cauliflower purée and studded with coconut and mushroom, was tasty, but also a bit too subdued. I also prefer less compacted, more roughly chopped tartares.

But after these gripes, the rest of the meal shone, including the meat-free dish of mushroom broth with daikon dumplings filled with sautéed vegetables that came next. Then, a honeydew melon granita was an intermezzo before a wave of heavier dishes.

Next was a slab of perfectly cooked sea bass with a superb fennel and onion sauce, its chartreuse pool enlivened with dots of chili oil, coriander oil and curry leaf oil.

Things got darker, heavier and spicier with a course of striploin steak matched with an intriguing, potent sauce made from a type of lentils usually fed to horses. In his recent Indian travels, Mohan came across sauces made with these lentils, and he told us he was moved to present his enhanced version. This success reminded me of how moles, those ambrosial Mexican sauces, can be presented in fine-dining settings.

The final savoury course was based on dalcha, a lentil stew enhanced with tender chunks of lamb and paired with a ragi (millet) dumpling. Kathā’s conversion of traditional, homey Indian fare into upscale creations was startlingly good.

The first of two desserts, the shahi tukda, harkened back to similar rich and comforting bread-and-milk desserts that Mohan served at his past restaurants. Kathā’s shahi tukda was Mohan’s most sophisticated iteration yet. The meal ended with paruppu payasam, a humble but satisfying sweetened lentil pudding with dollops of soft meringue and bits of deeply toasted coconuts.

We were very impressed with our wine pairings, which we were told came from expert Rene Wallis of Buyers + Cellars. While I was absolutely busted as a reviewer when we went to both Vivaan and Kathā, I don’t think the personable service we received was any better than the treatment of other guests in the spacious dining room that seats about 30.

The souvenir menu that guests bring home from Kathā is explicit: “We set our sights on being recognized by the Michelin Guide and Canada’s 100 Best,” it reads.

Bad news: Michelin’s inspectors may never visit Ottawa. But as someone who’s eaten at more than a few restaurants ranked on the prestigious national list, I think that Kathā, even in its early days, would be a worthy contender for inclusion.

phum@postmedia.com

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