A Spicy Date Night at Mela

After checking into the Four Seasons, Bret and I spent the afternoon relaxing at the hotel pool and whirlpool.  By the time it was evening, we were both famished for dinner!  I had made reservations for dinner at Mela in the South End, which is just a short walk from the hotel.

We arrived in time for our 7 PM reservations but were asked to wait while a table became available.  While I understand that Mela is a small restaurant with limited seating, I was a little frustrated waiting twenty minutes for a table.  I mean, what is the point in making a reservation?  There were a few other groups of diners in the same predicament who seemed equally annoyed.

But, by the time we did sit down, Bret and I were ready to put our annoyances aside.  It definitely helped that we received an amuse bouche of a fried spicy cauliflower.

After indulging in complimentary bubbly at the Four Seasons, I decided to continue with a glass of prosecco at dinner.

We started out with Chicken Pakoras for an appetizer.  We cheekily called these Indian chicken nuggets as the chicken was dipped in a chickpea batter and then deep-fried.  Despite the fried preparation, these nuggets were light and not a bit greasy!

For our entrees, we decided to split two different dishes.  The first was a Lamb Coconut Curry, which had tender pieces of lamb and had some serious heat!  I should mention that the server asked us if we wanted our dishes mild or spicy and I said I wanted it really spicy.  They definitely didn't disappoint and I loved this dish.

Our second entree was the Butter Chicken and I loved the creamy tomato-based sauce.  This was definitely Bret's favorite dish and I'm going to try to do some research to make this dish at home sometime.

Our entrees came with a huge bowl of basmati rice and although we usually refrain from lots of carbs, we surprisingly ate most of the rice.

We indulged in more carbs with the garlic naan.  This was a good choice because we found relief from the spicy lamb coconut curry from the garlic naan and I couldn't get enough of the naan!

Bret and I really enjoyed our date night at Mela.  The food was all incredibly delicious but the service was a bit hit or miss.  We waited quite a bit for our table despite having reservations, it took awhile to get the attention of our servers throughout the evening and our dishes were sloppily presented (as can be seen in the photos above).  In addition, Mela also offers hot stone cooking at the table but doesn't have appropriate ventilation for it.  As a result, when a neighboring table ordered their hot stone cooking, our clothes ended up reeking of smoke at the end of the night.  We noticed that Mela's take-out business seemed really busy and perhaps ordering from their delivery service will be a better option for us.

Mela is located at 578 Tremont Street, Boston, MA.