Matt & Meera: Indian culture in the a.m.

For yet another week, my efforts to visit the establishment which I have been craving go unfulfilled due to a combination of my own schedule and hours that don’t exactly line up with co-op. What does line up with working hours, though, is dinner. So, this week, I was feeling a bit adventurous once again and ventured to a place I had been before but never explored: Matt and Meera, located smack dab between Mikie Squared and Benny Tudino’s.

Last summer, several Sunday mornings became Matt and Meera brunch due to a brunch menu that extends well into the early afternoon and a number of good prices as a brunch special. Their main theme is Indian though, so I figured a bit of experimentation was in order.

First, some familiar comforts: their drinks. While they have typical restaurant drinks, they also have a number of more ethnic drinks, like pineapple juice, watermelon juice, and mango lassi. The mango lassi is honestly one of my favorite things in Hoboken: fresh, fruity, and with some thickness, but not so much the drink clogs. The watermelon and pineapple juices are also very refreshing, but mostly due to their very simple but very effective recipe of taking the fruit, juicing it into a glass, and serving it at the table.

For an appetizer, we split the first item on the menu, the “Naan”-chos. Styled after nachos, these come with typical fixings like salsa, guacamole, cheese, and sour cream. However, Matt and Meera’s goes a step further by also using naan chips instead of tortilla, and including a green sauce traditionally served with naan that is so familiar from trips to Karma Kafe, and was a happy surprise here. Overall, while the presentation wasn’t great (with so many intermingling sauces, looks are quite the challenge), as reported by one of my dinner guests, “those were so much better than I was expecting.”

Since my guests weren’t particularly hungry, I ordered an entree, the fish tikka, solo. The fish tikka is one of their “grill” entrees and comes with rice, mango salad, and a dipping sauce for the grilled salmon filet. While some elements of the dish like the mango salad were very good, I just wasn’t quite the biggest fan. With the protein (normally meat, but in this case fish), I’m used to experiencing a mix of seasonings which improves a cut of meat that wouldn’t otherwise taste particularly good or isn’t necessarily of the highest quality (expectations for $10 lunch buffets must be tempered after all).

What was very different here was the use of a quality protein: salmon filet — and they killed it. Salmon on its own is very delicious given the proper cuts, but this particular cut got the same treatment as a much lesser chunk of protein. I could taste the quality, well-cooked salmon on the inside, but it was at times spoiled by the grilling and fairly intense seasoning of the salmon. Not exactly helping the cause was the entree-level price tag on a dish which was a bit on the smaller side, even for salmon filet.

With the meal on the line, out came dessert. We ordered the pistachio chocolate crunch, which I was surprised to find was a frozen treat, and a traditional chocolate mousse cake. The chocolate mousse cake was relatively standard, but solid, with a nice touch of cocoa powder on top in the same manner as one would find on tiramisu. As for the pistachio chocolate crunch, I thoroughly enjoyed the mixing flavors of chocolate and pistachio, both present but neither overpowering. The ice cream was a a refreshing palate cleanser and capped off the meal rather well.

Matt and Meera is one of those places many tend to walk by but are relatively hesitant to visit due to the eternal question: what are they? From the outside, it looks like Pita Grill; from the inside, it smells more like Karma Kafe. The owners of Matt and Meera have tried to straddle the two and done a pretty decent job. By preparing dishes which celebrate Indian culture but don’t alienate the typical Hobokenite, they seem to have found something which can appeal to both groups.

So, while I might keep my future personal excursions to Matt and Meera to brunch specials, don’t let that stop you from a first or early foray into Indian culture and culinary delights.