2 posts tagged “indian food”

I went to Artesia a few days ago for good Indian food.  There are so many good options but I ended up at Jai Bharat which I suspect is an Indian snack shack. But it has tasty grub.

I ordered this:

Uttapam

It's a masala uttapam. It is basically a rice pancake with potatoes, onions, and chillies tossed into the batter.  Some of the chillies were pretty warm! There's a fork buried under the uttapam, but I just ate it with my hands. Somehow it always seems to taste better that way. OK, I know it tastes the same, but it does feel more authentic. 

There are two sauces accompanying the uttapam, including a nice coconut one. The bigger container has sambar in it -- I don't know how to describe it. It's not really a soup per se, more like a brothy dip. 

One evening Mahmood drove us to Juffair, a newly-developed part of Manama that's close to the U.S. Navy base in Bahrain. There's a long strip of restaurants and cafes and a nice mixed crowd of people. I saw a Nando's chicken restaurant, and decided that we'd eat there. I have fond memories of eating at Nando's when I was in Cape Town. It serves Portuguese South Africa roast chicken flavored with peri-peri chili sauce. I thought it would be a nice change of pace from Arab food, which isn't very hot at all. Even Indian food in the Gulf isn't hot.

Bahrain

What a disappointment! Not only was it expensive for Bahraini standards it was dry as hell.  I normally won't pass up chicken, but this was bad. Mahmood ordered some kind of giant kebab that was served on a spit suspended over a pile of French fries and cole slaw. Bahrainis sure love their fries... but with everything? I'd rather have bread. Mahmood seems to have a knack for ordering the most expensive items on the menu ... I think he's taking advantage of us in this respect.  Funny -- why am I ordering chicken when he's ordering lobster?

Earlier in the day we ate at Akbar's, the Indian restaurant in the hotel. One day a week they have buffet lunch for D4.50 (that's $11.93 in greenbacks) which I would have avoided if I could have except it was too fucking hot to walk outside.  So we were trapped by our hunger. When we got there we were the only people in the place. The buffet was pretty lavish, all things considered, but with a bunch of stuff I don't particularly like -- like paneer for example. Patooey.  But it was good for people watching. An older English couple came in...the woman was actually pleased with the spread, but her husband looked horrified. "I've never had Indian food before," I heard him say. At another table an Indian couple was desperately trying to get their son to eat something.  The father said, "Somemething something something 4.5 something something. You're making me very angry. Something something it's not hot." At least the live entertainment was interesting. It's the same Indian music I can hear coming up through the floor when I am in the depths of insomnia. Funny -- it sounds better at 12 noon than it does at 2 AM.

Gudabiya-avenue-ramada