Shanti Indian & Nepalese Restaurant, Hongdae
Yes, we visited a Halal Indian restaurant when we were in Korea. We had a discussion with Martin, the owner of Urbanwood Guesthouse about what to do on New Year's Eve. Initially Martin wanted to stay at home and we wanted to visit COEX at Gangnam to watch the K-Pop New Year Eve celebration.
When it got closer to the afternoon, we decided not to go to COEX because we figured it would be flooded by people. Martin suggested that we could have dinner together at a good Indian restaurant. I thought that it would be better if we had traditional Korean food during New Year's Eve but after a long discussion of choosing other restaurants, we decided on Shanti.
Martin also invited Rafi, a Swedish girl that stayed at the guesthouse a couple of years ago. Shanti was within walking distance from Urbanwood Guesthouse and we arrived at the restaurant at about 8 PM. We chose Set A because it seemed that would get our money's worth by trying different curries and dishes. We also ordered mango and raspberry lassi as part of our set.
We had a lot of starters between us: samosa, green salad, tandoori chicken and tandoori prawn. The samosa came with really good tamarind sauce, I wanted to dip the whole samosa into it. The grilled tandoori chicken was juicy, delicious and a bit peppery. The prawn was really fresh and Hubby enjoyed almost all of our prawns.
We chose Mutton Masala and Chicken Masala as our curry that night. The owner also brought us two plates of rice and giant Nan. The nan didn't even fit into the basket, it almost looked like the nan was just floating on top of it. We loved the tomato flavour of the masala and tenderness of both chicken and mutton. Nan and curry were definitely one of the best cures for a cold winter night.
Shanti was a great Indian restaurant. The owner was really friendly and they definitely put a lot of thought into the decoration as well. There were some colourful lanterns, table clothes and Bohemian styled pillows at the restaurant. We went on to Thursday Party Draft House afterwards with really fully tummies.