Parsee cooking came to India with Zoroastrian refugees from Persia, and it tastes like it — sweet, sour and hot at the same time, built on tamarind, jaggery and dried fruit rather than cream.
Dhansak is the dish most people know: lentils and meat, slow cooked, with a sour edge cutting through the richness. Most curry-house versions sweeten it and leave the sourness out — ours doesn't. Patia brings the sweet-sour-hot balance further forward and is rarer still; we serve it with prawn.
If you've only had curry-house dhansak, the Parsee version is a different dish. Available with chicken, lamb, prawn or king prawn.