October 18, 2003

The Urge to Be Indian

Friday night, I slept during the day for the first time in a long, long time. I hate napping during the day, because I inevitably wake up feeling more tired than I was before, and moreover, then I cannot fall asleep at night and this ruins my schedule for like four days, before I can restore my routine. In any case, I could not stay awake Friday afternoon and so I slept from 5 pm to about 7:30 pm. I woke up craving Indian food badly. I had not eaten any Indian food in months so I guess this explained the craving.

It was late and I was still groggy so I did not feel like going out to Shattuck or University where the tried and true Indian places are, so I went to the closest one to Unit 3—Naan & Curry. When I walked in, I was not impressed by the place—it was pretty dirty, the music was really loud, and the general ambiance was not particularly appealing. I looked through the menu and they did not really have any food that I wanted. I looked at the sign and it said Indo/Pak cuisine. That explained the lack of food on the menu—whenever a restaurant is Indian it will say Indian cuisine. If a store is Pakistani, it will say Indo/Pak cuisine. I do not know why that is, but it has always been like that in my experience. I ended up ordering lamb shish kabab and some naan. As I was waiting around, I took a look at the tandoor (oven) and decided not to look any more, because the metal they were making the kabab on looked rusty. I got home and was eating, when I realized that neither the kabab nor the naan was particularly good. In fact, the more I ate, the more I did not feel well. The only positive thing I can say is that the food was a bit spicy, which was good because I had not really eaten spicy food in a very long time. But other than that, the food made me feel sick the rest of the night, which was bad news (bears). I do not think I'll be going to Naan & Curry any time soon.

The story does not end there however. The next day, after heading out to the Michael Moore talk, Garett, Donna, Jason, and I went to this new Indian place that opened up by Ben & Jerry's. It's called Khana Peena and the sign above store says Indian Cuisine. All I have to say about this store is that it was nearly the antithesis of Naan & Curry. It had real Indian food (I mean in an Americanized way, of course) but still. The naan was good, the palaak paneer (spinach) was good, the tandoori chicken was good, and most of all, it was buffet style, so you could take whatever you wanted. To top it all off, it's quite cheap—$5.99 for an all you can eat buffet. The only complaint I had was that the gulab jamun (a type of dessert) was hard (probably from sitting outside all day) and nearly inedible. Other than that, this place has made it into the list of regular stores I go to increase my chances of an early heart attack, finding a place among such reputable establishments as La Burrita, IB Hoagies, and of course, Blondies. It is a bit of a walk, but I am definitely willing to walk a bit to avoid the pain caused by Naan & Curry last night.