Jin Ramen, Harlem, Near Columbia University

http://www.jinramen.com

There is a new Ramen place, Jin Ramen, on 125^th and Broadway.  It caters largely to a Columbia University crowd and serves four kinds of Ramen—Shio, Miso, Shoyu, and Tonkotsu, the latter one in a spicy and non-spicy version.  Ramen places in the US are sort of like the way McDonalds are in India.  A popular fast food concept that has been moved to a new geography and upscaled to offer more of a “dining experience”.  Most Ramen-Yas in Japan are places where the food is served at a feverish pace, the sitting counters are tight and customer turnout is rapid.  Food orders are taken at the counter and no one lingers at the table beyond the time it takes to slurp down a bowl of noodles and broth.  On the other hand, Jin Ramen, like other places in New York, is a sit-in establishment where the waitress will take your order. 

I had the Tonkotsu Ramen, the richest of the Ramens, where the soup is boiled with pork bones and cartilege for hours, the end result a rich and heavy broth laden with fat globules.  Immersed in this broth are slices of pork belly and Ramen noodles—the outcome a thick and satisfying meal  with so much fat that at the end, you will not need any chap stick for hours (if it is winter).   My son had the Shio Ramen.  Not to be confused with the more commonly available soy based Shoyu Ramen, Shio has a light, yellowish broth that is made with chicken and some pork.  Tonkotsu lacks the Shio’s delicate flavors, but brings with it more of the straight line acceleration of a big-engined muscle car.

Jin was crowded even on a late Sunday evening, and peak times during weekends require a longish wait.  The sitting space is small and the cooking area, on display beyond the counters, is a hotbed of activity with steam peeling off of bubbling broths, colanders of noodles scooped out of cauldrons two at a time, and things getting cooked on large flames on large cooktops.  Jin serves straight upfront Ramen without a lot of variants, as you will find in Menchenko Tei, for instance.  While I am not a Ramen expert by any stretch, the food felt as good as I have had in Japan.

Mallu Café in Philadelphia

10181 Verree Rd
Philadelphia

This is as good as Indian food gets in the United States.  Mallu café is no café at all—you cannot buy coffee here, and the proprietor will direct you to the 4 Dunken Doughnuts nearby for coffee.  But the Malayali food that they have, food authentic to Kerala, the sultry communist state in India flush with gulf money, high education rates, procreative “half-cylinder” lungis and steamy movie heroines, is out of this world.  Our friends A&S recommended this place, this torrid, tumid space warp of a place in a coterie of shops between two roads that form a “Y”. It is about 16 miles from downtown Philly, in a far away suburb.  If you can make the trip you will not be disappointed.

Avial, beef curry, goat pepper fry—these are the three dishes that we had with rice and layered parathas.  The curries were dry, fried with spices and grated “kvwok’nuts”, this species referred to as a “coconut” elsewhere in India.  I could discern hints of Milagai Podi, the signature South Indian mixture of spices and lentils.  The food was rich without being oleaginous, and led to none of the characteristic feeling of heaviness after an Indian restaurant meal.  Whatever little oil that was used, was infused with the fragrance released by the coconuts and spices during frying, and bound the meats in a tight clasp of comraderie.  The food was hot, but as M noted, this came from the pepper, as in many traditional Indian foods, and not the use of chilli powder.  I do not recall eating with such abandonment of restraint, since the meal at Bukhara in Delhi in 2005.

The walls are painted a Kerala red, cutlery consists of plastic plates and spoons and the dishes come in plastic containers.  The proprietor flat out ignores you till you approach with trepidation to remind him that perhaps you could also have a meal while you are there.  At which point you realize that he is a friendly fellow who then pulls up a chair next to you and chats abouts his life.  This all gets irrelevant once you start eating. The cook is from Goa but the food is authentic Malayali (as swears my knowledgeable friend).  You look at the food, at the red painted walls, at the deep shadows cast on the walls, at the proprietor standing behind the counter plastered with a poster of a Mallu “dhamaka”, and you can almost feel that there is a bicycle repair shop under a coconut tree that has materialized outside, with a kid seeking a leak in a tube by dunking it in water, and a truck with OK Tata signs and no brake lights getting repairs done by the tea shop.  The pasty curries, with their concentrated heat, and their intense deep flavors will lull you into this world willingly till you see no more that you are in Philly.  This place was--to paraphrase a stuffed shirt art commentator that we heard later in the day on a visit to a van Gogh exhibit--“utterly delightful, what a joy”.  

Pod Restaurant, Philadelphia, near the University of Pennsylvania

www.podrestaurant.com/
 

Pod is a gussied up American take on Asian food run by a well known Philadelphia restauranteur, Stephen Starr.  It has a 60’s retro-chic interior with a smattering of dim bluish and purple light cast over white furniture. It is a glissile place where, by the looks of it, there appears to be no friction: a bottle of beer could just slide forever down the long bar. To me the place feels like the womb of an enormous whale deep under the Arctic waters.  It is a cold ambiance.  Cozy is not the word that I would use for it, but some folks like it (including my son). 

We ordered kalbi-beef fried rice, lamb lo-mein, and pork belly buns. The food is done with an American sensibility, it all tastes very fresh. Snippets of sweet, sour, and spicy by-lines keep it interesting.  But—like the ambiance--it is frictionless with no rough edges or drama.  You can switch from a spoonful of rice to a spoonful of the lo-mein without discontinuity.  If you are having a business dinner, this is a good thing, and it is a perfect meal for conversation, should you succeed in reading the menu under the dim lights. The service is excellent.  The food is unique and has been prepared with care, but it is a uniqueness that appears engineered and lacking in spontaneity.

Neo Bistro, Mt. Kisco

www.neobistro.com

Neo is the only place in Westchester that I know of, that has begun serving Vietnamese Pho bowls.  It is a mixed Asian kind of place, that opened up a couple of years ago and seems to be doing good business.  I don't care much for the “dim and sleek” style décor, but the food will not disappoint you.  The bibimbap, served in a hot stone pot was well made, the rice well crusted against the side of the pot, a dish befitting the restaurant’s Korean management.  The Pho, with a broth richer and deeper than what is usual, was hearty and wholesome.  It appears currently as a special on the menu and I do hope that they do not drop it.  Lovers of Japanese noodle bowls such as Ramen, will like Pho for it offers the same mix of a casual,  satisfying and no-nonsense meal.  The sushi was of the same quality as any of the run-of-the-mill Northern Westchester sushi places.  The place does not have the cosiness of nearby Little Kabab Place, but has a varied collection of Asian dishes that are not phoney and well worth going for.

Note added Jan 29, 2012: A second visit ratified the conclusions from the first.  The Pho is a steady dish, with a wholesome, filling broth.  The bibimbop is reliable.  This place is a fusion Asian place that does not muck with the dishes by alloying them with different ethnic cuisines.  That often turns into a fashionable disaster.  It is fusion in the sense that they will serve dishes from different cuisines.  And they have made a success out of it.

Neerob, on Starling Avenue in the Bronx

www.neerob.com/

Neerob is a Bangladeshi restaurant that is part of a block’s worth of Bengali shops in the Bronx, known as “Banglabazaar”.  In the evening the small restaurant is crowded with young Bangladeshi men sitting around tables, in the middle of an “adda”(a rump session), with cups of tea.  Neerob does a brisk take out business with an established clientele, and the occasional newcomer attracted by the recent review of Neerob that appeared in the New York Times.

Most Bengali restaurants in the tri-state area are Bangladeshi, and as far as I know the now shuttered “Babu” in Greenwich Village was the only restaurant from the Indian side of Bengal, i.e. the state of W. Bengal.  This is not a bad thing as the East Bengalis (i.e. folks from Bangladesh) have a fabulous cooking legacy and they will sneer at the prissy cooking habits of the West Bengalis, their lack of spontaneity, and their annoying habit of adding a spoon of sugar into anything that they cook.  Mass migration of hindus from eastern to western Bengal took place during India’s independence in 1947.  The nation partitioned along religious lines into India and Pakistan, and the food and culture of West Bengal changed forever. 

The Bengali food from Bangladesh differs in two respects from Indian Bengali food.  The first is the heavy muslim influence: the use of beef and aromatic spices more common to North Indian cooking.  Try the Beef Tehari, for instance, something that you will not find in an Indian restaurant.  The second difference, characteristic to many Bangladeshi restaurants, is the heavy handed use of chilli powder and spices, making the food discomfortingly “hot”.  Unless you are at the “macho man” stage of South Asian food appreciation, this will not be too exciting.

The biryanis at Neerob are fragrant and have chunks of tender meat in generous amounts--I would go back again, for the biryani alone.  The hilsa fish curry comes packed in oil, like chunks of sodium that explode in your mouth with heat.  Hilsa is a delicate fish that sings to you when lightly cooked , with a streak of mustard across its tender meat that is held together by a gossamer scaffold of a thousand bones.  It is a travesty to cook it with so much oil and chili.   The goat curry was surprisingly mild and, like the biryani, had soft, quality cuts of meat.  In the confections department, the rosogullas were a delight, with restrained use of sugar.  But the gulab jamuns, which taste fine, show hints of artificial coloring: their whitish cores were tinged with crimson.  There is no need to add coloring—this is a thing of the past and if Neerab is to get the attention of an increasing variety of clientele, they need to pay attention to things such as these.

But go there for the biryanis, for the tea that they will pour out in paper cups at a dollar a cup, and for the ambiance of the adda that grabs the place every evening—for that alone, it is worth a trip to Neerob.

Saravanaa Bhavan in the Upper West Side, New York

413 Amsterdam Ave

http://www.saravanabhavan.com/

Saravanaa Bhavan opened up a few years ago on Lexington-- on the Indian strip in Manhattan.  I have reviewed it earlier, it has remained vastly popular, though with food that has been uneven over different visits.  Their success has prompted this global chain to open a second restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue. 

We were there last week with A&U, and S who was visiting from B’lore, old friends with plenty to talk about, children jettisoned to college (except our youngest), taking in a cloudy Manhattan afternoon and its assortment of sour faced New Yorkers enmeshed in a buzz of their own activity.

The dosas come on an impressive stainless steel plate with 4 depressions at the head of the plate, containing 4 different dips –sambar and a couple containing lentil and coconut pastes.  They were a disappointment- too oily and crusty.  They should have taken lessons from the Pakistani cook who runs the Dosa truck near Columbia.  Only in New York, will you get a guy from Lahore who can concoct a better dosa than a pedigreed chain from Madras.  The idlis were fresh and the sambar wholesome.  The South Indian coffee was a tad watery, though, after years of Starbucks, this may be my own perception problem.  We had badam halwa for dessert—ground almonds cooked in ghee (clarified butter) and honey.  It felt like a full frontal slap with a gob of fat, while someone pours a bucket of honey over your head.

Saravanaa Bhavan, named after the Lord Muruga, started out of Madras around 1980 and is now a worldwide chain with outlets in France, UK, and Singapore among other countries.  The enterprise has a sweatshop reputation in India for making its employees work long and hard hours, and its founder, who built the business starting from scratch, was given a life sentence recently for committing a murder driven by unrequited passion.   

Anyway, the Upper West Side now has a sit in South Indian place, and dosas are getting as common place as tandoori chicken (almost).   This is good news.  But the Lord Muruga would have been better served by the man from Lahore that afternoon.

Dosa Cart on Broadway between 115th and 116th Streets near Columbia University, New York City

There is a Pakistani guy from Lahore who runs a Dosa Cart parked on Amsterdam near the entrance to Columbia, who will make you a dosa as good as any for five dollars.  It is a simple dosa with a hot, fresh and clean tasting potato filling.  It is about 12-14 inches in length and chopped into portions that can be conveniently eaten standing on the sidewalk.  I was drawn to the cart (actually a little van) by the sign advertising dosas.  Chatting with the guy I found that he was a Punjabi from Lahore—I had never had anyone from Pakistan make me a dosa, a South Indian specialty.  I would have imagined that his cart would specialize in kebabs, but this fellow seemed to specialize in vegetarian food.  Any trepidation however, dissolved at first bite.  For five bucks and an additional dollar for a soft drink, you can stand right beside the gates at Columbia University and have a great meal.  It is a sign of the times that Indian street food available in NYC is as good as Indian street food in Indian cities.  It is a sign of this city’s successful multi-ethnicity that a great dosa can be made by a Pakistani!

Earthquake at the Union Station, Washington DC--lunch at Aditi Indian Kitchen

I have reviewed Aditi Indian Kitchen at Union Station before, and praised its no nonsense honest fare.  Today, I arrived into Union Station on the metro with a few spare minutes for a quick lunch before catching the 2 pm Acela Express. Loathing the idea of a grab and go sandwich, I decided to give Aditi a shot. So at 1:33; sped down the circular wooden staircase at the center of the station that arcs down to the basement. At 1:34; after waiting behind one customer, placed my order of chicken biryani, goat curry and an alu(potato) bonda to the efficient guy manning the counter.  At 1:36 paid for my food, and begun my lunch—the chicken curry was reliable, the goat meat tender and beyond what I had expected (some places can skimp on the quality of the meat leaving you with bony, chewy pieces), the curry a touch too spicy.  But mixed together, the biryani and goat made for a great, quick lunch.  The bonda was a couple of hours past its prime.  At 1:43 I was done, headed to gate F and in a few minutes seated and wi-fi’ed on the train.  At around 1:55 or so, the earthquake hits, I think it is one of those cases where the bogeys jump around a bit when a new engine is attached to the train.  Except that it went on for a few tens of seconds. At 1:58 a fellow passenger lets us know that someone just texted him about an earthquake.  A bit later I learn that it is a 5.9 earthquake.  Probably not large enough to seriously shake up a place like DC.  A nice lunch.  And a brief rumble.

Sakoon, Mountain View, CA

http://www.sakoonrestaurant.com/

On a recently visit to Silicon Valley, my friend KC took me to Sakoon, a newish restaurant in Mountain View.  It has a labyrinthine layout, with passages leading into inner rooms, and then more passages and rooms further beyond. 

Indian restaurants have started paying far more attention to the presentation of the meal.  This is not important to me, but for some can be an added appeal.  Sakoon offers an intriguing appetizer—the avocado jhalmuri (avocado seems to go well with Indian food—Tanzore in LA had a similar pairing).  Jhalmuri is of course the traditional Bengali street food often served in makeshift cones of recycled newsprint.  This jhalmuri came in looking like a bride, a colorful cylinder of packed muri glued together by the condiments, sitting on a bed of mashed potatoes and avocado. 

KC gets a headache if he consumes a vegetarian meal, so the jhalmuri was paired with seekh kebab—not as moist as I would have liked, but restrained on the spices (I know this sounds like a broken record in all of my posts, but this is important).  For the main entrees we ordered Punjabi Bhindi (okra), Kashmiri lamb chops, and Lakhnavi murgh (chicken) biryani.  You will note that as in many other Indian restaurants, the dishes at Sakoon  bear the names of places in India, implying a certain regional authenticity.  This is by and large BS—there may be some regional guidance behind the spirit of the dish, but the authenticity generally has as much credibility as the Manchurian Gobi (cauliflower) that is popular in today’s Indo-Chinese restaurants.  This is not to say that these dishes do not taste good.  If it helps, the regional reference can offer the seduction of ethnicity.  Imagine that that the lamb chops that you are eating, where folks at the next table are talking about 10G Ethernet technology, could be the same as that cooked  on an open fire, by brooks bearing ice melt from the Himalayas.  Or that the Lakhnavi (from Lucknow) biryani is the one that a chess playing nawab takes a spoonful of askew while he makes his move on an ivory chessboard, eyeing his zenana beyond.

The biryani came casserole dish styled, with the mouth of the dish sealed with a naan, similar to dum cooking, where the food is mildly pressure cooked in its own aroma and vapors by putting a lid on a casserole that is sealed by the flour batter.  This had subtle themes of spices, and rice that remained white rather than the typical yellow coloration that biryani often takes.  The lamb chops, notwithstanding visual imagery, were marinated and cooked to tender perfection.  We used the Bhindi, a blackish looking dish in the dim lights of the restaurant as dry curry added to the biryani or had it with the naans.  It was good, though I always have a love-hate relation with Indian vegetable dishes, where the essential technique involves overcooking the vegetable.  There was Kingfisher on draft available, which is always an added bonus.

For me, Sakoon brought a dose of respect back for North Indian restaurants in the Bay area, given my earlier disappointments with Shiva’s in Mountain View and a restaurant in Burlingame a couple of years earlier.    

Rangoli in New Rochelle

www.rangoliindiancuisine.com

When we stepped into Rangoli on a Sunday afternoon, we were the only customers, an effect that beats upon itself  in a spacious restaurant creating a sense of loneliness.  You wonder whether this is the right place to eat, but the piped music by Kailash Kher and Rabbi brings you back in. 

Rangoli has conventional menus (for the buffet), good quality food, the authentic use of spices, and a refreshing home cooked feel.  There is some culinary liberty that it takes, but uses to good effect—the dosas (a South Indian dish), as my friend A stated, tasted like good “North Indian” dosas.

We had the buffet.  It had variety-- several meat, chicken and vegetarian dishes as entrees and kebabs, potato vadas and “self-help” chat as starters.  The chat ingredients were incomplete and the result amateurish.  The lamb kebabs had fresh tasting spices, though they were a tad dry, not uncommon for a buffet.  

Most fish is overcooked in Indian eateries, for Indian restaurateurs have collectively discovered a new method of synthesizing rubber that does not depend upon the sap of trees.  The fish at Rangoli was cooked beyond recognition and I would recommend avoiding it. The veteran lamb “rogan josh” was a winner, with the use of good, tender, meat that indicates this place did not try to cut costs in the wrong places.  The winners here were the vegetarian dishes—when a unique dish emerges, such as the dry shredded cabbage  stir fried with mustard seeds in South Indian style, curiously named “Bollywood Sweet 16”, you go for seconds and thirds.  Our hats off as well to the gajjar ka halwa (my North Indian readers will forgive the lapse over a Bengali’s misuse of ka or ki), a sort of carrot roux that is more solid than liquid—grated carrot cooked with ghee (type of clarified butter), milk and sugar.  It was not too sweet, nor floating in ghee and we settled our lunch in at the end, over refills of this classic dish, washing it down with tea. 

Ganesh Temple Canteen, Hindu Temple in Flushing, New York

(http://www.nyganeshtemple.org/)

 You will not get a better dosa for 4 dollars than at the cafeteria in the basement of the Hindu temple in Flushing, in New York City. Incongruous in the heart of Flushing, are the meticulously worked domes of a South Indian temple and a complex that contains a first rate auditorium and a fantastic cafeteria specializing in South Indian fast food. This is what I had been looking for all along—my Komala Vilas clone from Kolkata, a busy  place bustling with customers on bare, laminated tables in a sparse room bereft of formulated décor. 

It was my first visit to the temple.  It was also the first time that I have had a meal wearing traditional dhoti and kurta, dressed as a I was, for an evening drama performance as part of a suburban Bengali theater group making its first foray into the city.  Indeed the food was so good, that post-drama, we dropped by for a second meal. Most of the visitors to this cafeteria are South Asians, many of them devotees at the temple.  While there are a few non Asians scattered about the tables, the place seems to have gone largely unnoticed by foodies.

We had dosas and vadas at the temple, along with South Indian coffee at very, very reasonable prices.  The coffee was weak and milky, but the place sells a variety of dosas: Hyderabadi chili masala dosa for the brave, to the proletarian plain dosa with either the normal skin or a “paper” skin, where the batter is spread out extra thin on the flat frying surface, so that it crisps out like a giant fan akin to the fin of a huge, starched turban.  It is large enough that it needs to be supported by two plates.  These dosas are the real thing—not oily, nor over crisp, and the accompanying sambar dip is just as it should be: a subdued, polished presence that elegantly completes and extracts the splendor of the gaudy dosa without upstaging it, like the male counterpart in a tango duo.  I have searched for the perfect dosa often, receiving ephemeral glimpses of it on occasion, on a whimsical day when the stars lined with the chef’s manipulations at places like Saravanas in Manhattan, only to be disappointed by an oily, potato chip texture like mess when I revisited.  The dosas at the temple met their mark this time, this was like the South Indian restaurants in the Kolkata of my youth, replete with the sales lady speaking a perfect Bengali with a fluid South Indian accent.    

If you are a person of religion, you may find God twice at this temple, if you are agnostic—like I am--you will find Him at least once.  If you want authenticity in food, this is it. 

Ramen noodles at La Fiesta in Narita Airport

This was my first trip back to Japan after the earthquake.  Other than a few telltale signs, it appeared business as usual in Tokyo. Power shortages have forced the use of less illumination.  Airconditioners were turned down and not all restaurants were open at hotels. Radiation levels in Tokyo have always been safe and have returned close to the baseline of ~0.1 micro-sieverts/hr.  Even after the first rains following the disaster, the number had climbed to a maximum of only a few micro-sieverts/hr, more than a thousand times less than the dose received on a round trip flight to New York.

Before entering the immigration area, there is a food and shopping court upstairs at Narita airport, and there is one shop there that sells Ramen.  It has been a habit of mine to pay homage here before I fly out.  It is not so much the quality of the Ramen here, but the desire to finish off one last noodle bowl in Japan before departing is what brings me here.

There are 3 choices for Ramen noodle bowls: the usual ones with soya and with miso, and a dish with roast pork slices.  I went for the roast pork slices—the broth was hearty, the noodles themselves with their characteristic yellowish tinge reasonably fresh, though I would probably avoid the roast pork slices and go for the cheaper, regular slices in future.  Ramen at most places does for me what I believe it is supposed to do: provide a quick, warm, and tasty meal with fresh noodles and a few slices of meat swimming in a satisfying broth that has seen its share of “stuff” that has simmered in it for extensive periods.  This “stuff” is a matter of much ado and fuss, at times cloaked in secrecy, and a matter of much snobbery, whether among the Japanese menfolk who love Ramen, or New Yorkers like me, who have made it an acquired taste to fuss over.  But snobbery is a matter of style, that I suspect is at odds with the very purpose of Ramen, that percolated up as a quick fix noodle meal, from its Chinese “lo-mein” roots.

Anyway, the place at the airport, with the improbable name of “La Fiesta” seems the only place out at Narita where you can get Ramen.  Wash it down with a glass of lager beer and you are ready to hit the security lines.  The place does what it is supposed to do.

Dhaba Indian Cuisine, 108 Lexington Avenue, New York City

http://www.highwaydhaba.com/

We drove to Dhaba for lunch during one of the rainiest spells that New York City has seen, whipping up an appetite in the effort to find street parking.  The Dhaba serves “British Indian Food”, as a sign proclaimed, though the word Dhaba itself originally refers to Punjabi truck stop eateries on Indian roadways.  I remember one of my most memorable dinners in one, on a dark metalled highway in Assam at night, sitting on charpoys (a light hammock like bed with a wooden frame and four legs) in a little clearing by the road soiled with engine oil.  Then in the mid 1980’s the “Dhaba” brand name caught on and trendy North Indian restaurants in places like Kolkata would adopt this name. 

This Dhaba on Lexington had no truckers, no charpoys and no bedbugs that often accompanied the charpoys.  The Bangadeshi taxiwallahs preffered to eat at Kasturi, a nearby hole in the wall on Lexington with great (apparently) Bengali food.  Dhaba is a trendy Indian restaurant with a trendy New York Indian style—a tidy space jammed with people and a long row of glass bangles hung above the buffet spread in a horizontal line, a sort of letimotif to the place. 

The appetizers at Dhaba were delicious, a significant cut above what I usually have.  Do not miss the Bhel Puri, a sort of West Indian version of Jhal Moori, and Pani Puri, where you fill little crisp and hollow puris with spiced mashed potatoes and tamarind, plopping them whole into your mouth.  Do not miss the Pao Bhaji either, a Mumbai specialty of bread and a potato- pea curry that originated as a quick lunch meal for textile workers in Mumbai, the Marathi name for bread adopted from the Portuguese “Pao” from neighboring Goa.

But just as a song that uplifts with its opening melody but dissipates in time when the tune can’t hold—so it was with the entrees that followed at Dhaba.  In an undesirable salute to its name, the entrees were indeed like food sold at Indian roadside Dhabas: oily and spicy--cooked without much fuss or deliberation.    The lamb curry was overtly rich, but the meat was soft and tender.  The sag paneer was greasy, and lit up your plate with a fluorescent green.  The entrees were not bad, as the huge crowds that afternoon attested to, it was just that there was little originality and too much oil.  Perhaps it was because this was a buffet lunch, for the lunch entrees at Indian restaurants are often not up to the standards set for dinner.  Finally do not miss the Dhaba style Indian tea—it is authentic.

There is one irritating note of complaint--Dhaba is a decent Indian restaurant short of a good dishwasher.  More than once I had to reject a clean buffet or dessert plate because it had food stuck to it that was left over from the previous customer.  For a Manhattan restaurant that is not cheap, this was atrocious quality control.

Ambadi

141 East Post Road, White Plains, http://www.ambadi-usa.com/

Ambadi is a small, reasonably priced place close to the Sam Ash music store in White Plains with a few small tables, but mainly geared for the take-out business.  We visited it twice in the span of a few days, once for take-out and once to eat in.  It has an informal atmosphere, and an LCD screen that shows Bollywood movies, viewed with passing disinterest by a few customers waiting for their food.

For take-out we had biryani that was aromatic, meaty, and well prepared.  The sag paneer and oily naans were standard issue.  Ambadi is also the only Indian restaurant around here that sells goat curry, so we we ordered that.  I would only put the biryani as being above average.

We decided to visit again a few days later, and settled on some Bombay chat as appetizer, and kati rolls as the main entree.  The chat was fresh and well prepared, but the kati rolls were off the mark.  A kati roll is a paratha, or a rumali roti that is rolled around a filling of grilled or tandoor cooked meats, mixed in with onions and other garnish, and perhaps a tang of lemon.  The intent is to get the taste of dry cooked meat against a background of the other ingredients whose freshness provides a sprinkling of clarity.  The rolls at Ambadi were heavy handed in taste, the filling a mixture of oil soaked fried onions with some meat.  There was no counterbalance, or the feeling of breeziness that one should get when eating a kati roll. 

The visit was disappointing.

LA and Tanzore (aka Gaylords) on La Cienega (www.tanzore.com)

Fat Boy Raul with his name crossed out on wall graffiti, lights shining on lights, reflecting off the hoods of bimmers, bouncing off the sidewalks, then settling, cradled like pools on the road; a cool waft of LA breeze that blows in from the oceans, floral prints in January--I am there--a one time resident, flying in after a numb fingered tire change on a bitterly cold night, in a pothole puncture, off Van Wyck near Kennedy. 

Gaylords in the eighties was one of the legendary Indian restaurants in LA, in the heydays of Westwood when the warm weekend nights around UCLA would be alit with the gaiety of a street fair, and thick crowds would meander through the night, with Lebanese falafel, shawarma, and the international flavors of this city.  Gaylords was the restaurant of the well heeled older Indians—we as graduate students frequented the now burnt down India’s Oven. Our first Gaylords meal was tentative--there to celebrate a graduation, we picked at the menu sparingly, sensitive to its prices.  I remember curries in stainless steel katodis, we were convinced that it had to be good, the four of us in their twenties, in a 1984 Civic.

Many things change in a city, never the quality of the light, never the smell of its undefinable feel, so too for LA after 22 years.  Gaylords changed its name, changed it back again, then renaming it now to Tanzore with the Gaylords brand name still hovering somewhere in its description.  Rebuilt and expanded at the same location, we enter a huge tasteful space and lounge, and for me a first in the men’s room--little television screens right above the WC’s, tuned to a TV channel.  This was LA, you never knew what to expect. 

It was not all about the food that night.  It was the memories of a youth, felt by feeling the embroideries of the past.  The Civic now long gone, after years in Minnesota—packed off in farewell with a tow truck.

Gaylords has a dim restaurant ambiance with big boxy lights from the ceiling, sleek with a woody Nordic feel, but a deep Indian tone and shine.  The food remains deserving of an elite restaurant.  The tandoori lamb chops are a specialty, and the dish survived the transition to the new restaurant. We had them medium rare, and they were perfect, of the “closed eye in enjoyment” variety.  If you seek tenderness, lamb chops marinated with Indian spices and a bit of yogurt impart dollops of it (I suspect they had yogurt but I cannot be sure—they may have had some papaya as well, which is a fantastic meat tenderizer). Indian recipes overcook vegetables,  but if you are willing to overlook this, the Baingan Bharta, where the eggplants blended pastelike so that it formed a thick, viscous consistency with the rest of the condiments, went well with naans.  A vodka-citrus scallop salad with pomegranate seeds, hearts of palm  and avocado was a pleasant surprise, a non-Indian dish to me, not that it mattered—it felt light and breezy.  I hate to use the word “pairings”, firstly because we are talking about more than two items, and secondly because it is a hackneyed cliché, but the pomegranate, hearts of palm and avocado went well with one another—the first two familiar to Indian palates though never together, the avocado traditionally unknown within India. 

For dessert I have been on a kulfi binge lately--Tanzore makes its own kulfi, and this is always reason to try.  There are typically two types of kulfi’s served in Indian restaurants—one that has a creamy, consistent and smooth texture that starts out rock solid, but turns smooth once it has had a bit of time to warm up in your mouth.  The other offers a more brittle texture at first bite giving away its store bought mass pedigree, the granularity coming from small amounts of melting and refreezing as it sits around.  It is a small, but discernable difference.  This in my mind is a decent yardstick of the quality of a Indian restaurant—I usually ask the waiter whether the kulfi was created on the premises.  Tanzore’s kulfi was good, the respectable product that one expects from a restaurant of its stature.  I had hoped that it would be served with the traditional vermicelli, but we were told that customers apparently did not like this.

We drive across the city at night.  Apart from a few new high rises in downtown, its profile has remained the same: low and flat, like a droplet of water spreading unchecked, forming a thin film on a surface it has completely wetted.  A good meal, a once familiar city, the glow of the city bouncing around in its smog, and palm trees whizzing by a freeway that the night has now unclogged.

Shiva's Indian Restaurant, Mountain View CA

http://www.shivasrestaurant.com

“Nice, nice, not thrilling, but nice”, is what Mel Brooks’ character said in the History of the World Part I, and this just about summed up my assessment of Shiva’s.  Eight out of a scale of ten, two missing.  Shiva’s makes a buttery smooth Seafood Curry, with prawns and sea bass, in a mellow sauce of coconut milk and curry leaves, a “Madras” curry kind of concoction.  It makes a decent Rogan Josh, that if you tasted it, you would know was made in a good Indian restaurant in the United States-- you would keep grabbing the chunks of meat by their throats with pieces of soft naan and pop them into your mouth.  Glance through the menu and there are the usual suspects, the lifers—Dum chicken biryani, vindaloo, tikka masala.  Come on!  In Mountain View, California?  Even Westchester county has bolder Indian restaurants, that are experimenting with new things. This is the place where, driving from San Jose to SFO circa 1994, I saw my first billboard ad with a web address pasted across it.  The valley where things of the future are meant to take place now.  The food was well made, no doubt about it.  The place has ambiance, great service, even Kingfisher on draft.  It is the well trodden path that I am tired of. 

We thumb through the menu, halting at an interesting dish named Gangtok Chicken, and I asked the waiter whether this was, indeed, a Sikkimese dish as the name suggested.  He did not vouch for it.  Gangtok’ey gondogol.  We move on.

We started off with appetizers—Manchurian Gobi, increasingly popular and the only Indo-Chinese dish on the menu.  Crisp, colorful Papri Chat. Rich and creamy kulfi.  Masala chai that could have had a bit more punch to it.  A polished restaurant in a polished town, you cannot find much fault with the food.  Yet it lacked that bit of eccentricity, that twist in the food, maybe the slightly off-kilter chef like the one at Mana Thai in Mt. Kisco, or Sushi Nanase, that would make it worth remembering for the long haul.

Mana-Thai Cuisine

360 N Bedford Rd , Mt Kisco, NY (914) 244-8588

Years ago, if you wanted decent Thai food in Upper Westchester, you had to make a trip to Reka’s in White Plains.  There was a Thai place in Thornwood but the food wasn’t too good.  Then, 2 years ago, a couple of new Thai places sprung up—in Mohegan Lake and Mount Kisco; and now there is yet another new Thai restaurant—Mana Thai, in Mt. Kisco in the strip of stores that contain CVS and Blockbuster on Bedford Road, in place of the earlier Myong eatery.

We landed at Mana-Thai on a cold, cold night, the day after a heavy snowstorm.  It is a small place with a few tables and a large professional kitchen with lots of stainless steel.  There was a single cook/manager and a helper, and as the piped music played through the ceiling speakers, he would abruptly join in every once in a while, striking sharp, somewhat discordant notes with the music.  I like that in a cook.

The atmosphere was laid back.  He came by in a few minutes and took our order, chatted with us.  And then proceeded to whip it up on the huge, professional gas burners behind the counter.  The soups—Tom Kh Gai and Tom Yum Gum—were good, not great.  The fried calamari appetizer was wonderful, crisp and fresh.  A Singha beer while we waited for the main entrees.  Pad Kimao, Pad Thai, and Thai fried rice with its characteristic aromatic spiciness—well made and honest. 

It was the atmosphere that was endearing, perhaps it was the snowbound coldness of that night, the somewhat unconventional layout and service, the good hot food that was eminently affordable—we will be back.  A welcome new addition!

Note added Aug 21, 2011
We have visited Mana Thai a few more times, and it is a unique, small restaurant!  Go there a bit late in the evening.  There is only one chef (and owner) who cooks for you, so the dishes arrive in sequence.  If you are willing to overlook this slight logistical hiccup, you will be rewarded by fresh, wonderfully tasting food, cooked from scratch.  It is as simple as that.  The tofu soup that we had yesterday was silky with the taste of the vegetables deep in its broth. The  Larb, ground chicken salad had the classic tang of Thai salads and the staple of Thai dishes here--the Pad Thai, was a reliable war horse of a dish that takes its rider through yet another journey--solid and reliable.

Bollywood Bistro

68 Wheeler Ave, Pleasantville, http://www.bollywoodbistro.net/

Bollywood Bistro was started in  downtown Pleasantville a few years ago and this is about the second or third time that we have visited, this time for the lunch buffet. It always has a few customers and seems to be doing well.  Space is a bit of an issue, this is a smallish restaurant—so the buffet items are arranged rather tightly in the entry area.  The store is Bollywood themed with scraps of Indian movie posters sparingly stuck into the walls.  This afternoon’s buffet had a few interesting dishes.  Mushroom Manchurian is a take on the more common “Gobi (cauliflower) Manchurian”, which is itself a take on Chinese cooking in India, with mushroom encrusted in batter, in a sweet and sour kind of mush. Mushrooms are quite uncommon in Indian food, used only in Kashmir and possible North-East India, but this improvisation tasted rather nice with the fleshiness of the mushrooms.  A Ma ki Daal (daal made by mother—supposed to represent comfort food), felt homely, especially with the fresh warm naans that were brought to the table.  There was a Rasam, a South Indian tomato based soup (that is usually had with rice or rotis), that was morphed to a thicker consistency with finely cut tomatoes and vegetables in it, and had a bit more oil than I am comfortable with, but tasted good.  Traditional rasam is almost consommé like in its lightness and consistency.  There was steamed vegetable, not quite Indian food, but one that we enjoyed—an argument may be made that Indian dishes murder vegetables by overcooking.  The Bombay potato curry was ho-hum, there was fresh tandoori chicken brought to the table (we passed, it was a veg day) and the dessert, Ras Malai, was light, fragrant, and infused with the flavors of saffron.  I would have liked it had they used a bit less oil, but overall –if you are in Westchester and had an Indian craving--this place could suffice.

Calcutta Wrap and Roll

465 Ardsley Ave., Ardsley, http://calcuttawrapandroll.net/

Last night we visited this new place in Ardsley, conveniently located off the Ardsley Ave. exit on Sawmill Parkway, amidst a gaggle of shops that include a motley collection of eateries named Bubba’s Grill and Tavern, Thai House and a Mexican restaurant; a testament to the cosmopolitan nature of this county.

Calcutta Wrap and Roll is primarily a take out place, but with a few tables for eating in.  It is run by a good friend of mine, and fellow local Bengali thespian, Chitta Saha, so please do take my review with a pinch of salt—I may be biased in my opinions.

Kati rolls and their variants are a type of street food that is very popular in India, meant to be eaten on the go, and originated from a restaurant called Nizam’s in Kolkata (Calcutta) several decades ago.  You can find them in a few places in New York City, but this is the first time I saw them on a Westchester menu, and was the reason for us to go visit this restaurant.  We ordered chicken rolls, finely diced potato crisps and idlis.  A roll is an egg paratha rolled up with chunks of chicken, onions, and garnishes.  The roll is then wrapped in paper, and you eat your way down its length by gradually unwrapping it.  The finely diced potato crisps are a Bengali specialty.  The idlis were standard issue.  The food had the warmth and heartiness of home cooked fare and the price was very affordable.  If you don’t mind tight, sparse seating and self service, the eat-in facilities are fine.

The rolls were excellent and had none of the oiliness that is the bane of Indian food at times.  The mark of good food is the urge to have some more, and we ended up adding to our order in the middle of our meal. I had long hoped that there would be more variety of Indian food in Westchester, more of the informal foods that I grew up with.  That moment appears to be arriving slowly, but surely.

Vatan--vegetarian restaurant in Manhattan

409 3^rd Avenue, www.vatanny.com

It was Diwali, the festival of lights, and U was not having her usual dinner this year.  I wanted a somewhat offbeat, but good Indian restaurant in the city to mark Diwali, and we picked Vatan.  I had been here 10 years ago, and had not been impressed—the food was oily and heavy.  Since then, the place has undergone a sea of change.

 Vatan is a vegetarian Indian restaurant that serves Gujarati food.  The interior is spacious, tastefully designed to look like a village courtyard in western India, replete with a faux banyan tree.  The lighting enhances the sense of space, the dining tables kept apart, unlike other Manhattan restaurants.  The laid back demeanour of the wait staff, the Bollywood art film colors and dresses, and the ambience imposes a sense of comfort. 

London had its Indian diaspora of the 90’s, the Punjabi—Jamaican influence.  In the 2000’s New York City has its own Indian diaspora—gaggles of twenty somethings in black clothes, who hang around the trendy Indian restaurants in Manhattan.  They fuel the financial industry in the city, the men in rectangular glasses, the women-- resolutely straight of hair--scarfed up for the winter.  Sprightly, slim, handsome faces under the fluorescents and the restaurant lights, the glows of the exit signs, they stay for another dinner, another night out, another polished cog in this glistening city, another night to go back to their apartments to read Tom Friedman.  This is the new culture, part dhamaka, part Friedman, Indianism in Manhattan.

Vataan has a 3 course prixe-fixe menu and I recommend this.  The first thali (platter) are the appetizers.  They offer seconds and I recommend that you take them up on this.  The starters are the best part of the menu.  Good food brings back good memories.  The batata vada, spicy mashed potatoes in a batter, fresh as the one made by the street vendor at the Kamala Nehru Park in Pune.   Dahi(yogurt) Puri, of long lost afternoons on Rashbehari at Junior Brothers.  Deceptive battered green chillies that will light a fire on your tongue.  There is dhokla, a Gujarati special, a puffy cake like thing made of rice and dal, chana (a curry made of Bengal gram), that I first had at the public markets in Bhuj.  There is little oiliness, and dollops of authenticity.  The second platter consists of the main dishes--rice, pooris and delicate kadhi--these are fine dishes but they lack the hard-to-find-in-New York quality of the first platter.  It all ends with dessert: mango ice cream that tastes like it was picked up at the corner grocery store.  This is what is incomprehensible about Indian restaurants in New York—their fluctuating quality control.  But then I did not come here for the ice cream.  Vatan dished up absolutely the best batata vadas that I have had in years,  and for that alone, I would be back here again.

It is a special restaurant, with a special décor, left aside for those unique times of the year, like a little Diwali celebration with friends with warmth and good food.