Text 23113, 120 rader
Skriven 2012-03-30 16:04:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: tastes of India 455
===========================
Three meals last month at what are supposed to be
the best places in their respective communities,
the first three towns heading northwest from Boston:

Punjab, Arlington

A nice setting, dimly lit; the staff were good enough
but kind of supercilious: they wanted us to order way
much more food than we did (everything but rice is
a la carte). The food was quite well executed.

I asked for chicken korma, unlike me, as one of those
at table doesn't do hot. This was a good, smooth, creamy
version, perfect for amateurs, perhaps a bit overperfumed
with cardamom. I ate mine with bites of a devil-horn
green pepper, which made it more palatable for me.

Baingan bharta was exceedingly rich with ghee but also
contained some cream; a bit of lemon cut the richness
and sweetness.

The aroma of the lamb tikka was very charcoaly, but the
flavor was mild and nice. Unfortunately (in my view)
the meat had been trimmed into nice cubes, so the
connective tissue and fat had gone away, probably
ground into kofta makings or something. 

Creamy, delicious dal; ordinary rice.

Not too expensive, but a pricy wine list. We had
Taj Mahal beer.

==

Maharaja, Cambridge

This is on the second floor of the Galleria and is
spare but not particularly elegant. I ceme here for
the buffet so I could taste a lot of things. The food
was pretty nicely done, but the flavors were neither
delicate nor particularly interesting.

Fried "baingan bharta" appetizer - sourish salty
eggplant pieces fried hard in chickpea batter; not
inspiring, but I had two servings to fill up.

Turnip curry - also rather salty, and the nice
sweetness that a good turnip has was mostly cooked out
of the dish. Tasted like a big lump of cabbage with
some dusty spices that were somewhat abnormal for me,
black cumin for example.

Dal was good, rather like a vegetarian chili, and I
had seconds of it.

Baingan aloo was perfectly ordinary. Eggplant, potatoes,
celery seed, various spices that as usual were sponged
up by the potatoes, a nothing dish.

The yellow almost Japanese quality of the chicken curry
surprised me: it seemed incongruously eastern, but then
it brought me back to my childhood, when I ate this kind
of thing. I liked it okay but didn't have more.

Chicken tikka masala had a bit of a bite to it and was
okay as well. I might have had a second splash but do
not recall, which is saying quite a lot in a not so
positive way.

Chicken tikka was the best thing, as I fished out the
dark meat (thighs and drumsticks hewn into random-seeming
pieces) and feasted on it.

Gulab jamun were heavy, greasy, syrupy, every horrid thing
that you think of Indian desserts. I went back for seconds.

Kingfisher beer.

--

Royal India Bistro, Lexington

A tiny space at the far end of expensive Depot Square in what
is both one of the most historic and one of the most affluent
places in the country.

I came here with Bob Eaton, who was in the throes of chairing
a convention of several hundred rabid choral conductors.

As he knows I am at least as enthusiastic about food as I am
about music, he had me order.

Baingan bharta, which keeps reappearing in my life, was smooth
and buttery and delicious and with twice as much turmeric as
usual; this had some consequences later. I needed to bolster
it with some hot pepper, though. Discernible chunks of onion
and tomato.

For his sake we had the lamb korma, chunks of almost tender meat
(I suspect from the shoulder), also a little redder than I
expected, in a stroganoffy sauce of cashews and cream. A couple
of limp overmacerated raisins.

The otherwise good rice had some big starchy blobs in it.

Peshwari nan is called kashmiri here - a butter-topped bread
with a raisin-coconut-cashew topping. I liked it okay but
preferred it at various places where they put on more topping
and serve it puffier.

Kingfisher beer.

Afterward, we walked for a while on some historic walk in the
park that extends between Lexington and Concord, Minuteman
National Park I think it's called, talking about wine, women,
and song, not necessarily in that order (actually, in reverse
order),
___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Fidonet Since 1991 And Still Here. Join Us: www.DocsPl (1:123/140)