Restaurant Experience: Neela's Indian Restaurant!

New Year's Eve, the Mrs. and I headed out to downtown Napa for a culinary celebration for the exiting of the exciting 2009. After a recent introduction to Chef Neela Paniz at the 2009 World's of Flavor at the CIA-Greystone, I have anxiously awaited the opportunity to try some of her northern and southern province-themed dishes at Neela's Indian Restaurant in Napa.

Amuse to start the meal.

No New Year's Eve dinner is complete without some bubbles to celebrate. Luckily for us, a recent visit from Vernon and Janet Walnofer from Southern California left us gifted with a bottle of Wiens Family Cellars California Amour de L'Orange Sparkling Wine.  This 100% Chardonnay wine, made in the méthode champenoise, is uniquely enhanced with a slight natural orange flavoring to give it a unique flavor composition which we found perfectly matched the bright, spicy, and exotic flavors of Chef Neela's Indian dishes. Maybe the Weins Family could create Amour de L'Tamarind for this specific pairing in the future!

You can't try eveything on a menu the first time you visit a restaurant, but Chef Neela has a created sampler dishes that showcase specific categories of her menu. This is great for introducing unfamiliar Indian cuisine to novice dinners as well as offering multiple selections for ambitious first time restaurant patrons. Here is the Non-vegetarian sampler of  (left to right) Unday Ki Chutney, Kathi Rolls, Rassols, and Shrimp Samosas along with a spicy pumpkin chutney and Tamarind dipping sauce.

You don't need a grille, a smoker, or a braising method for your meats in most Indian dishes, just a tandori oven! Here is the Tandoori Sampler of Seekh Kabab, Chicken Tikka, and Shrimp with a Mint Chutney.

Saath Mein translates to "along with."  So along with our sampler platters we also got the Dal of the Day....

......some Naan.....

.....some Paratha.....

.....and some Chapati.

From the Mrs. and I, Cheers to a great year gone by and cheers to all the life-changing decision making of 2010!