We went to a new restaurant tonight.

(By “new”, I mean one we haven’t visited before. It’s actually been there for years, just beyond our normal walk-from-home restaurant circuit.)

Qmin is an Indian restaurant, with a mid-range style. The menu was interesting, with a good mix of the classic Indian favourites you’d expect, plus some new and interesting house specialties that show the chef is applying a bit of creativity. We started with semolina-crusted eggplant circles, served with a coconut chutney, then moved on to a coconut lamb curry and some classic black dhal with rice and peshwari naan. We can’t go past a peshwari naan – the sweetness of the nuts and fruit in the bread is just too addictive. And this one was really good – possibly the best peshwari naan I’ve ever tasted, and I’ve had a lot of them. The eggplant entree was very nice, as was the dhal, though next time I go here I think I’ll try something other than the lamb again.

One thing I noticed was the large window giving diners a view of the workings inside the kitchen. I’ve seen this before in other restaurants, and I just realised that it seems to be a feature of Indian restaurants in particular. I mentioned it to M., and she and I counted off a list of Indian places we’ve been to in the past. We realised that almost all of them have either a big window in the wall letting you see into the kitchen from your table, or in fact have the kitchen out in the open, again visible from the dining tables. We counted at least 6 other Indian restaurants we know that conform to this rule. I presume it must be a cultural thing about Indian food preparation. It’s interesting to realise something that you’ve sort of assimilated unconsciously and never really noticed fully before.