Nazima Pathan's spiced crab with roasted peppers and date sauce is simply sublime.
The ethnic cross-pollination can be seen in dishes like spicy bourbon ribs with fresh date sauce, and pulled-pork falafel.
Various starters followed: excellent king prawns in garlic and chili, on a small dollop of tomato and onion sauce; jeera chicken wings cooked in ginger and cumin, whose flesh melted off the bone, served in a tamarind and date sauce sweetened with blocks of raw cane sugar; soft potato and spinach bhajis.
Ours consisted of individual chocolate souffles served with praline ice cream, an intriguing gingerbread soup garnished with cardamom and date ice cream and a wedge of gingerbread, and a wonderful combination of fig ice cream, cream of date sauce, toasted almonds and pistachios.
Or have egg bonda sitting beside its mint-coconut chutney and a tamarind date sauce.
Meat was a main staple, and I ate many a delicious shwarma and kebab slathered in pomegranate date sauces in Kurdish pita that had a triangular style unlike anything I had tried before.
Among main courses, there are a roast pork tenderloin stuffed with walnut romesco, served with caramelized date-shallot sauce and roasted garlic potato gratin; pepper-crusted Black Angus sirloin with sherry vinegar steak sauce and smashed fingerling potatoes with cabrales blue cheese; and whole cracked lobster served in the shell with sherry vinegar-tarragon sauce and salsa verde risotto.
Try the pani puri (crisp dough spheres filled with potatoes, sprouts and a tart date-tamarind sauce, which burst deliciously onto your palate), bhel puri (puffed rice mixed with onions, tomatoes, mint chutney, crunchy gram-flour threads, peanuts, lemon juice and coriander) and the milder pankhi (delicate rice pancakes steamed in banana leaves) — not exactly street food but too good to miss.
There's a layer of chewy raw brownie, creamy coconut nougat and date caramel sauce studded with peanuts, all covered in a vegan chocolate ganache.
Add the dates to the sauce.
And most food scholars agree that some form of the sauce dates back to pre-Hispanic times.
