Novelty Sweets & Restaurant Sydenham Menu

Novelty Sweets & Restaurant Sydenham brings a vegetarian dining room and an Indian sweets counter together at its Wordsworth Street premises. Guests can sit down for a full meal, collect takeaway or arrange catering, while the range moves comfortably between quick street-food snacks and composed thali plates. The shop format also makes it possible to call in for a box of sweets without committing to lunch or dinner.

The snack and chaat sections reward a mixed order. Samosa, vegetable pakora and paneer pakora offer crisp, familiar openings, while vada pav, kachori and dhokla broaden the selection beyond fried appetisers. Tandoori vegetarian dishes bring smoke and spice, and the chaat list supplies another set of savoury plates for diners who want to sample several contrasting snacks at once.

For a fuller meal, the Punjabi thali gathers paneer, a vegetable dish, dal makhani, lachha paratha, raita, salad, pickle, papad and a sweet on one tray. Amritsari kulcha is stuffed with potato, onion and Punjabi spices and served with chole, raita and pickle. North Indian curries and breads can be combined more freely, while South Indian dishes provide another substantial vegetarian route through the menu.

Indo-Chinese dishes, rice plates, drinks and desserts extend the savoury range, but the sweets remain central to Novelty's identity. Motichoor laddoo is one of the shop's highlighted specialities, joined by a wider display of Indian confections for taking home or sharing. That dual focus makes the Sydenham branch as useful for a celebratory sweet box as it is for a casual vegetarian meal with several contrasting dishes.

Address: 50 Wordsworth Street, Sydenham, Christchurch 8023, New Zealand

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