A friend offered to take me out for my birthday about a month ago and said I could pick the place. I originally wanted to go to Bunky’s but they had a 2-hour wait and we were both too hungry for that. Then we were going to go to one of the two new breweries on Atwood Avenue but there was absolutely no parking anywhere near either of them. So when we were driving down Atwood Avenue we saw Dobhan, a Nepalese restaurant owned by the same person that owned Chautara. I loved Chautara and was sad when it closed. The owner said he couldn’t run both so he decided to keep Dobhan open and close Chautara, so I figured it would be a good choice.
We walked in to a half-empty dining room that was very bright and had an eclectic mix of decorations. It took a bit before we were seated because I’m pretty sure the only waitress was also the hostess and was clearing tables. The menu is an odd mix of food that claimed to be Nepalese. Both of us liked Chautara so we had high hopes for Dobhan. We both decided to start with a samosa. They came relatively fast but were a complete disappointment. The pastry was dry. The filling was tasteless and also dry. There wasn’t even enough of the filling to fill the samosa. Bottom line: I’ve had frozen samosas that are better.
Each entree comes with either a salad or dal. I went with the dal because in my mind dal is a good way to determine the quality of an Indian/Nepalese restaurant. And I was right again. This dal was luke warm, flavorless and had more broth than ingredients. I think dal should be the consistency of pea soup, be filled with vegetables and have strong flavors. I was not impressed with their dal and it was a hint of what our entrees would be.
I got some beef dish (it was so bad I didn’t even write the name down). It was a couple chunks of beef in a flavorless sauce with some limp veggies. The dish also came with some dry and partially stale wheat pita bread. The beef overcooked and very dry, and there was absolutely no flavor to the sauce.
FOODNOTES: My hope when deciding to go to Dobhan was that I would like it as much as I liked the owner’s other restaurant Chautara. I was badly misguided in that hope. Everything I ate at Dobhan was flavorless and pretty forgettable. Chautara’s menu used to have a salmon dish that came with perfectly cooked garlicky vegetables and a mango salsa on top. I loved that dish and am sad to say there was nothing even close to it on the Dobhan menu. I would highly recommend not visiting Dobhan.
Small Town Tourist 