Purple Cinnamon and Salt: Xian

First of all thanks a lot Karthik for inviting us for lunch over to Xian. We discovered one of the best spare ribs in the city.
Xian is located near the Ulsoor Lake. You might just drive pass it as because it has no flashy sign with the restaurant’s name. We assume that the interiors are on the cusp of completion, however that fantastic ginormous yin-yang on the ceiling, didn’t go unnoticed. The abundance of natural light just made it pleasant.
We started off with an array of starters: Spare ribs, chilli prawn balls, bacon wrapped prawns and crispy spinach with vegetables. The spare ribs like...stole the show! We aren’t big fans of the fat part of pork, but talk about being cooked to perfection. The meat just separated from the bone with one effortless stroke of the fork. It was tender, juicy and succulent. The sauce of the ribs could be served as a dip to turn any boring finger food yum! Well we held a mini conference over the last piece of ribs at the table. Moving on to the main course, we went for the Malaysian flat noodles with mixed meat, pickled prawn in black bean sauce, shredded lamb, Thai red curry with steam rice and sliced pork in char siu sauce. Yet again the pig stole the show. We guess Xian knows how to cook their pork and come up with lip smacking sauce to go with it. The Thai curry was another favorite at the table. There was a perfect balance of coconut milk and the spices. It was impressive to see ingredients like galangal and kaffir lime leaves to bring out the best flavors.
The crispy spinach with vegetables and pickled prawn in black bean sauce weren’t memorable. Basically, the flour over powered the taste of the spinach and the corn starch was just too evident in the black bean sauce. But the most disappointing of the lot were the chilli prawn balls and bacon wrapped prawns. The coating of the corn starch was used excessively for both these dishes that it made them chewy and heavy. The chillies in the prawn balls were over powering and were hard to go down. The flavor of bacon was totally lost in the bacon wrapped prawns. We definitely recommend any of the pork dishes, especially the spare ribs and the Thai red curry. And as someone said, good company always enhances the taste of food ;) thanks Karthik, Snigdha and Sreeja.