As spring turns to summer in Atlanta, palates and menus shift. We start to crave things that are grilled, somewhat lighter dishes, and maybe even some tropical flavors.
If all three of those summery characteristics sound good to you, the perfect dish may be waiting at Midtown’s Blue India. The restaurant’s Kerala-style red snapper moilee is like a veritable wave of flavor, rushing over the sand to meet you at your beach chair.
Fish moilee, also known as molly or molee, has a disputed past, like so many other recipes developed along trade routes. Some say it originated in Portugal, while others believe it hails from Kerala, an Indian state on the Malabar coast, where palm trees wave at the Arabian sea. The dish usually is classified as a stew, with curried seafood served in a coconut-based sauce.
Blue India rounds all the bases with this home run of a dish, and the kitchen adds a little style of its own. The curried red snapper, cooked in the restaurant’s signature tandoor ovens, carries a smokey, slightly charred flavor, almost as if it’s been grilled over a live wood fire. The smokiness permeates the addictive, creamy coconut and coriander sauce that cradles the fish and pulls it together with a side of basmati rice.
Though the portion is generous, the dish won’t leave you feeling bloated. With fish at its center, the warm, tropical flavors of Blue India’s red snapper moilee likely will satisfy, and still provide you with leftovers. Try finding a red snapper entree elsewhere in town for $20, much less one that will feed you twice.
Fish moilee’s disputed history won’t matter to anyone who orders Blue India’s version. When you taste this summery dish, you’ll just be glad it made it to Atlanta.
Blue India. 933 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta. 404-963-5775, blueindiaatlanta.com.
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