Maurya Indian Restaurant & Cafe, 58 Station Place, Sunshine. Phone: 9364 9001

Maurya existed before Consider The Sauce wrote about it in June, 2011.

Maurya will no doubt go on existing long after our lunch visit on a stinking hot day.

The question is: How?

As Bennie and I await our food, he asks: “Have you ever seen anyone else in here?”

My answer is: “No.”

Actually, that’s not strictly true – on one previous visit, I had shared the premises with a table of four.

But other than that … zip.

The use of the word “secret” in the above headline is a bit cheeky – Maurya is right out there in the open, if not particularly obvious.

But it is situated on an unsalubrious bit of Sunshine central, so presumably the rents are suitably low – no doubt another factor in its survival.

And I agree with Bennie’s surmising – Maurya’s customers, we reckon, hit the place at night-time hours, with truck and taxi drivers and students no doubt thick among their number.

In any case, we are happy to write about the place for a third time – we believe it deserves more love.

Customers can choose from a broad spectrum of Indian food at Maurya (menu below).

Curries, both meat and vegetable, all cost under $10 and include the ubiquitous butter chicken and rogan josh.

Listed, too, are various chaat dishes and biryanis.

But we’re happy to do what we reckon the regulars almost certainly do and go for two of the many snacky and/or brekkie dishes.

Our food doesn’t arrive “almost immediately”. But nor is the wait onerous. In  fact, it’s of just the right duration to denote that our lunch is being made just for us.

Bennie has seen his dad chow down on cholley bhaturey plenty of times but this is the first occasion he’s chosen it for himself.

The Maurya version ($8) is a pleasing affair.

The breads are fresh and delicious, the chick peas dark, rich and smooth, and the cooling yogurt appears to house-made.

My gobhi parantha ($7) is simply a superb light lunch.

The same chunky/runny yogurt as Bennie.

Two flatbreads stuffed with finely diced/smeared cauliflower that is tender, chilli-tinged and has subtle yet very present cauliflower flavour.

Slathered with butter and dipped in the yogurt, it’s all terrific.

Follwing the example set my CTS pal Nat Stockley, I have fallen into the excellent habit of listing restaurants on Urbanspoon when we hit new places or ones unlikely to have already been listed.

Obbviously, in such cases CTS is the first one to pass comment on the eateries concerned.

But I can recall no other situation in which a long-standing business has received no mention from anyone else – be it from bloggers or what Urbanspon refers to as “user reviews”.

Yep, we really do reckon Maurya deserves more love.

See previous posts here and here.