As we brush up on our French vocabulary and dust off our boat shoes, there’s one last thing to do before we head for the French canals – indulge in some real curry, and to us that means Durban curry.

It’s been going for about 25 years, but Impulse By the Sea Indian restaurant at Tinley Manor Beach, about 50km north of Durban, is still somewhat off the radar – except for those in the know, of course.

While we waited for our table at the bar, a plate of outstanding samoosas (yes, spelt correctly; R84 for 12) accompanied our Windhoek lagers and G&Ts. Though the restaurant is fully licensed, if you’d rather BYO than drink plonk, there’s no corkage payable.

Let the Feast Begin

Shamen Reddi and her late husband, Neville, gave up city jobs “on impulse” to start the restaurant. Now helped by her son, Pez, Shamen still presides over the kitchen.

 

Shamen’s signature prawn curry (R130 small, R160 large) features on the cover of the best-selling recipe book Durban Curry – So Much of Flavour by Erica Platter and Clinton Friedman. It was magnificent! Though the intense flavours and deep, slow back-of-the-throat burn took me back 30 years to another North Coast curry institution called the Sea Belle (still going strong, apparently), the food at Impulse is on a whole other level.

High marks too for the creamy butter chicken curry (R115), and for the lamb curry (R98). Heavenly popadums (R6.50), steaming rice and fluffy rotis (R7.50) rounded off one of the best KwaZulu-Natal Indian meals I can remember.

Happy Ending

A real Durban curry calls for a sweet finish, and so it became imperative to stop at a service station on the way home to buy a clutch of Magnum ice creams from the Easter Bunny.

One More Thing

Something else I have to do before we catch that flight to Paris on Monday, is to stock up on Indian spices from Gorima’s for the boat. It’s going to be five whole months before we’re back in Durban again – far too long to wait for our next Durban curry fix!