Nalan – Vegetarian restaurant in Singapore with South Indian and North Indian cuisine options

Nalan is a purely vegetarian restaurant in Singapore and has been in the food and beverage scene in Singapore for more than a decade. Featuring a delectable array of South Indian and North Indian cuisine, you can expect to embark on a flavorful journey. I visited their outlet in Capitol Piazza at City Hall recently and tried some of the newly launched items from their menu.

For starters, we tried the Crispy Water Chestnut Fry dish. Made in the Indian-Chinese method, this dish had deep-fried water chestnuts with bell peppers coated in a sweet, spicy and tangy space with spring onions as garnish. The overall dish was awesome and this was our first experience of eating water chestnuts in this style of cooking. Highly recommended that you try this item.

Next we tried the Tandoori Broccoli from the menu. Broccoli is a wholesome vegetable that tastes exceedingly good when cooked on a grill. This dish had broccoli florets marinated in hung curd/cream and spices and grilled in an oven till they are slightly charred. The chutney on the side served as a dip to the florets and overall the dish tasted harmonious. Be sure to squeeze the lemon served on the side.

Served as a weekend special, Ragi Dosa is one of Nalan’s speciality items. Ragi, also known as finger millet, is one of the superfoods that is known to have significant health benefits. It is easily available in the flour form and lends itself nicely to make one of the most versatile South Indian Dishes, the dosa. The batter was well-balanced and the dosa was crispy.

The dish is served with 3 chutneys – Tomato and onion, raw mango, and coconut. They also have a special ridge gourd chuntney on the weekend. The Sambhar was the liquid dip on the side. Highly recommended dish to try a healthy and different variant of dosa.

For the mains, we tried the traditional Dal Rice along with a Paneer gravy dish. The Dal Pancharatan consisted of five varieties of lentils tempered with ghee and spices. This tasty dal paired well with the Jeera Rice. The Paneer dish was cooked in a creamy cashew-based gravy and had soft cottage cheese cubes with peas and beans.

The dessert course consisted of Carrot Halwa. The carrots were slow-cooked with sugar and milk, and topped off with almonds.

Nalan have introduced a complete range of savory snacks and sweets that can be purchased as a takeaway. Based on the item, the boxes come in different sizes with prizes ranging from $4 to $8. Some of the items that are worth trying are:

1. Pearl Millet Murukku
2. Finger Millet Murukku
3. Thenkuzhal Murukku
4. Kai Murukku
5. Special Mixture
6. Adhirasam

Overall, it was good to see that Nalan have maintained their standards of serving authentic Indian vegetarian cuisine in Singapore. The new items showcase their attempt to bring more varieties to their customers and hence are definitely worth a visit.