Indique

Pleasant space, good food, annoying service. Kobi’s dish was really uninteresting. My lamb rogan josh was excellent, and more like the authentic stuff Vijay talks about when he’s dissing House of Lies (aka The Connaught Place). Likewise I also enjoyed Shields’ lamb dish, which I thought had a better quality of meat than other Indian restaurants, but he found tough. Taste is mighty subjective. Chicken curry was mild but subtle and quite good. Samosas so-so, chaat papri better than what the Reference Restaurant (aka House of Lies) calls “aloo papri”. Still, on the balance I’d rather go to Fairfax for good inexpensive Indian cuisine.

The decor is attractive. The drinks were competant. The foods were presented attractively, and spiced flavourfully if uninterestingly. But the whole package left me flat.

Indian food typically gets my mouth watering by smell alone, but not this time. And the wait was interminable. As far as I can tell, the order for our entrees didn’t go in to the kitchen until the last appetizer came off the table. Unfortunately, the last appetizer arrived 20 minutes after the rest of the appetizers were finished, and no one came to take it for a very long time. My appetizer, a “mini dosa”, was a bit soggy, and lacked the slight tartness of a typical south indian dosai.

So the table next to us arrived and ate their entrees in the long wait between our appetizers and entrees. The waitstaff would helpfully offer more drinks (with no water in hand), but didn’t produce our food. I’m sure that multiple $7 cocktails would have made the wait shorter. Perhaps even have made the food more compelling. Still, I declined.

In sum: it’s an exotic and pretty excursion for the american palate. It would probably make a very nice date restaurant, in conjunction with catching a movie at the Uptown. (Just allow for very leisurely food service.) But at $30 a head, excluding cocktails, I’ll be dining elsewhere.