From The New Orleans Menu Daily By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published April 17, 2007 Sara's 2$ Riverbend: 724 Dublin 861-0565 Lunch Thurs.-Sat. Dinner Mon.-Sat. AE MC V Multi-Cultural. Sara's began life as a pure Indian restaurant called Old Calcutta. After a few years, the owners (who are Indian) changed the name, renovated, and reworked the menu into something really original: a multi-cultural collection of dishes. Now, in addition to a handful of Indian dishes, Sara's offers studies in Vietnamese, Jamaican, Thai, Lebanese, Chinese, and even Creole dishes. Few restaurants straddle so many international boundaries. The restaurant attracts a small but regular crowd, and I suspect one fo the reasons for this is that Sara's may be the most peaceful place to dine in town. It's always quiet in there, and the soft decor and low lighting makes the feeling of calm even more pervasive. A good start here is the vegetarian Vietnamese handroll, served fresh and cool, with dollops of hot sauce. It's good and, like most presentations here, attractive to the eye. Other starters of note are the shrimp satay with Thai peanut sauce. The Indian samosa stuffed with potatoes, carrots and other root vegetables, seasoned with coriander. The salad with fried goat cheese. The best entrees here are slabs of seared protein. Examples: sesame-coated salmon, marinated tuna with a nice crusty exterior, pork tenderloin with a sauce of tamarinds and coconut. Grilled chicken with garlic mashed potatoes may have so many ethnic influences that it winds up tasting American. The Jamaican-spiced lamb chops taste of Chinese five-spice powder, but good at that. A long-running dish here, lamb Oxford, is a sort of lamb curry, and it's the best example of something I've always noticed here: though the owners are Indian, the Indian food is the least interesting of Sara's offerings. However, that ethnicity gives rise to a large vegetarian selection, in which one finds nothing but good dishes. The wine list is decent; they could use some enhancement of the desserts. Service is a trifle inattentive, but I suspect that's because the regulars like to be left alone to dine at a very leisurely pace. If that's what you're after, this place is perfect. This was a restaurant in the 2007 Top Sixty Ethnic Restaurant Countdown. To view the entire list, click here. Click here for an index of all restaurant reviews. © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com.