Or rather, I’m not feeling up to driving halfway across town to get it. My favorite Indian restaurant of all time, which happened to be a short walk from my house, closed unexpectedly a few months ago. In that time, a different Indian “restaurant” (it’s sort of a cross between a buffet and fast food) opened nearby, and it’s not horrible, but it’s like New York style Chinese takeout compared to a great authentic Asian restaurant.
There’s another great Indian restaurant but it’s about a 10 or 15 minute drive away, which I know isn’t a huge deal, but damnit I want it to be closer. And their butter chicken is no where near as good as my now-defunct favorite, although their samosas are better.
So I don’t know if I should take the short walk to the lower quality place and spend $8 on a sinlge serving of food that’s just ok, or drive over to the good place and spend $30 on a huge amount of food that will last me 3 days.
We have a couple restaurants here, but I have no one to go there with. I have to make do with foil packets and stuff from the Indian grocery store and take it home to cook. Or heat up.
IME, eating in at an Indian restaurant isn’t a good move monetarily. They never give you enough. But if you order the same dish to go, they give you a shitload. It may be $14 for a serving of palak paneer, but that’s enough for at least 2 meals. 3 or 4 if you get naan and samosas.
The only thing stopping me from heading over to the better place is I don’t have their menu, so if I called ahead to order I’d be stuck with either aloo ghobi, butter chicken, chicken tikka masala, palak paneer, or aloo papri chaat. I’d like to try something different but those are the only dishes I know they have, and I can’t ask them to read me the menu over the phone.
Guess I’ll just drive over there and wait 20 minutes.
You could go to Moon Under Water on Beach Drive if you’re in the mood for a curry. They only have a few Indian dishes (they’re actually a British restaurant) but they’re the best I’ve had in Florida.
Moon Under Water occurred to me as I started to drive to Ajanta. They do have some good curries, but they seem like generic curry dishes. And their naan is weird. It’s not bad, but it seems to me a bit less authentic.
However, a pint and some fish and chips, that’s always a good choice there.
ETA: And, awesomely, they let me do the buffet to go, so I got to try 3 different curries (plus naan!) for less than the price of a single curry. Nice. And this navaratan curry rocks.
A south Indian vegetarian restaurant that I absolutely adore is just far enough away that I’d have to take a long lunch in order to eat there. Their service is kind of skeevy, too. But closer in is one that is about 3/4 as good as the distant one, and nice people run it. I end up going to the closer one about once a week. They serve a “thali” (combination meal) for about $9 that gives you a small helping of about ten dishes: curries, soup, yogurt, pickle, and breads. It’s spicy and intense and I think while I’m eating it that the experience should last me about a month, and then in a day or two I find myself craving it again. When you gotta have it, you gotta have it. Damn those marvelous Indian cooks!
Oh, this is the perfect thread for me to ask my Indian food question that’s been bugging me: I recently quit eating meat, but my favorite food of all time is Chicken Tikka Masala. I know I’ve had something in that same sort of spicy tomato gravy, but with that delicious Indian cheese instead of chicken. Any clues what that might be? I need my fix!
We moved from a 10 minute drive from the best Indian restaurant of all time, with food so good it made my wife fall in love with me, to being an hour and a half away from the nearest halfway decent approximation of Indian food.
Oooh that sucks. I don’t think I’m moving out of this city anytime soon, but I know that a requirement for any future neighborhood will definitely be proximity to good Indian food.
It’s like crack. It’s the only food I can eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 3 days straight and still love.
I had Indian for lunch today! Yatra in downtown Houston is pretty damn good for you Houstonians. I wish I lived somewhere where I had lots of Indian options, because that one and the other near me are both the nicer, pricy kind. I would kill for an affordable buffet near me.
I took an Indian Bread cooking class this week. It was awesome, and the funny thing is that best bread was not the naan. The chapati was super easy and good, and the missi rotis were to die for. I took home the last of the dough for both of those and am making them both tomorrow. But the best thing was the coconut and mint chutney. Sooooo good.
I ate more bread and fats Tuesday night than I eat in a month, I think. Suffice to say I was sick the next day. But it was worth it!
I live within a half mile of five Indian places, including the best one in the city. The second best one in the city is about a mile away, and they deliver.
Lately, I’ve been cutting back on it. Only two nights a week. And lunch the next day.
Here’s an alternative: if you have an Indian market nearby, raid their frozen food section. I’m still overwhelmed with the quality of the dishes that I can buy frozen at one of these markets. I’ve tried palak paneer, saag paneer, channa masala, biryani, all kinds of things. They’ve all been very very good.
But the best of all? The frozen paratha breads. Paratha is flat unleavened bread stuffed with some sort of yummy spicy vegie preparation. They come in frozen discs, raw, each disc separated from the others with a bit of thin plastic film. You heat up a skillet good and hot and smack the frozen disc onto it. The bread browns on each side and puffs up a bit, and is done in about five minutes. “Murchi Masala” brand I liked best, with “puff onion” paratha as my favorite.
My favorite Indian restaurant of all time, which happened to be a short walk from my house, closed unexpectedly a few months ago. In that time, a different Indian “restaurant” (it’s sort of a cross between a buffet and fast food) opened nearby, and it’s not horrible, but it’s like New York style Chinese takeout compared to a great authentic Asian restaurant.