Tandoori Hut - Lunch Buffet April 17, 2007

I was feeling rather ill and took the day off work. In doing so Zac and I lazed around for most of the morning before I, feeling mildly better, suggested that a curry would clear up my throat and get rid of my head ache.

Hmmm the Tandoori Hut, Zac and I went there on our first “official” date in December. It was a late birthday present from me as I spaced on the actual date and Zac was without gift and I felt that was a bit unfair.

 So we wandered over to Kensington on what was possibly the most summery day we’ve had all year.

The one thing that I REALLY remember about Tandoori Hut was that unlike other calgary indian restaurants it doesn’t hold back the spices, at least not in the way that the disappointing Rajdoot did. I do remember eating something at Tandoori Hut and thinking, wow this is almost too spicey for me.

 Anyways, I’ve found that Buffets are only as good as the number of people that frequent them. Therefore, due to the location, I wasn’t expecting to be that impressed. If there isn’t enough people at the place then the food won’t be as fresh and it just won’t be as good, it’s still not going to be horrible, but it won’t be like eating at one of the big down town places (ie Mango Shiva), for obvious reasons.

So we went in and were told to seat ourselves wherever we’d like. They took our drink order and then we scurried off to the buffet to try our luck.

 This buffet is a Calgary indian buffet. It has it’s general dishes that Calgarians LOVE and it was alright, though did fall prey to the lack of people, lack of turn over in dishes. There was a beef curry and a butter chicken. They had a lovely looking chickpea curry and na’an.

 All in all the food was great, but obviously not AS good as when you order. The tandoori chicken was very good, but everything was slightly cold and felt like it had been sitting out for a while. I did love the butter chicken and the beef though the spicey heat that I had remembered wasn’t there (I’m assuming this is because they were doing the buffet thing). It was a nice lunch but very much a case of you get what you pay for. $30 for the two of us isn’t at all bad, especially the way that Zac can pack away a curry.

 For lunch buffets I wouldn’t go out of my way to come here, but if you are in the area it is a nice lunch for a good price. I still would reccomend it for supper though as their food is fantastic and some of the best curry I’ve had in the city.

#5, 201 10 St NW
Calgary, AB

Hours : Lunch: 11:30a-2p Mon-Sat; Dinner: 5p-10p Mon-Thu; 5p-10:30p Fri-Sat; 5p-9:30p Sun

Oh what a bummer April 3, 2007

HATE, SAD FACES, EMPTY TUMMIES…

So it looks like Mango Shiva has closed with the whole Penny Lane closing thing that finally happened (to think, I never managed to get to Cowboys). I was disappointed with this today, so disappointed in fact that I called the restaurant to see if they were still open (of course they aren’t). I had a lovely chat with someone, I have no idea who, but they said that sadly yes they were closed but will be moving to a new location. The new location is just across from that Flames bar, the spot used to be a Dairy Queen, (so I’m assuming that they’re going to have to do some renos) and will be opening sometime in the late summer.

 I do wish them well, the food was fantastic and the service was great. I hope not too much changes between now and August.

 Much foodie love to the people at Mango Shiva, my dining out plans won’t be the same without your lovely curries tempting me and RIP to the smoke shop too, Zac is already pouting and missing your humidor.

Glory of India - GLORIOUS! SIMPLY GLORIOUS Dah-ling! March 16, 2007

I am excited about this one, much in the way that I was excited about Mango Shiva but with a bit more oomph because I’ve found a curry place that lives up to my English memories (but not in the chicken tikka masala chips and rice way).

 Zac and I met up and ran into our friend Nathan yesterday. (Poor Nathan, I feel doubly sorry for him, firstly because he’s having all of his wisdom teeth out today, and secondly because Zac and I are going to the opening night of Fido tonight with the showing followed by a Q&A session with the director. Nathan is desperate to come along, even though we all know that there is no way being in a semi conscious state that he could survive the film.) So partially because of the guilt and partially because the best plans are often the ones that happen in the blink of an eye Zac and I grabbed Nathan and took him to Glory of India.

 Glorious it is.

 Usually Zac lets me order at Indian restaurants and he obediently eats what I order for him, yesterday we changed things up and he took the menu and scrutinized every page while Nathan and I discussed whether he would be able to make it out to the Unicorn on Saturday night for our St Patrick’s Day celebration.

 After much pondering, Zac ordered and I paid no attention, I’m pretty sure he was enjoying the male ordering food moment and I didn’t want to interject with a cheeky comment.

 For a starter we had the mixed vegetarian appetizer which came with samosas, veggie pakoras and paneer pakora. It was good, the samosas were nice and had a nice amount of heat to them which made me happy the pakoras were great and crispy. I’m not a HUGE fan of the fried cheese thing but I dont’ mind eating it when it’s placed in front of me, so I managed it (somehow ).

 Very quickly after the starter came our mains. Now I forgot something about my man and the food he likes. He likes meat and loves lamb so there I sat with probably about half a lamb sitting in front of me with a dish of rice and three garlic naans.

But oh was it ever fantastic. Zac had ordered the Seekh Kabob and some other melt in your mouth lamb dish that I will get him to tell me the name of tonight. The Seekh Kabob was very yummy and a little spicy, it probably could have done with a little more heat, but I’m not going to complain because it was nicely flavoured and tasted great. The other lamb dish was FANTASTIC the lamb did in-fact melt in your mouth and included were lovely mushrooms the flavours were robust and spicy and I loved it SO much.

 Nathan ordered the Lamb Chop Kandhari which was the house special. It was also VERY good and super tender. Nicely spiced and again it probably could have done with a little more heat, but this is Calgary so I’m happy that I’m eating indian food at all.  

Zac decided he wanted dessert, or rather he offered ME dessert which always means yes we will be having dessert.

Zac had a rice pudding, I’m not a fan of rice pudding in general  so it’s really not fair of me to review it.

 Nathan had pistachio icecream and I will assume that it was very good, he made yummy noises and discussed with us how fantastic it was (Pistachio is so good when it’s good).

 Now I had a very interesting dessert Gulab Jamun Fudge, effectively a Gulab Jamun sundae. Oh my god, it was great. So sweet and so good, it reminded me of brownie sundaes but with a very indian fusion flavour. It had three slices of the Gulab Jamun in a martini glass with mango coulis in the bottom, topped with vanilla ice-cream, whipped cream, a maraschino cherry and chocolate sauce. It was a GLORIOUS way to finish off our meal at Glory of India.

 What really did MAKE this meal for me though was the group of 50-something British men that sauntered in when we were ordering, they knew the waiters and proceeded with horrible puns like “Mamoun, My MAN” etc. From my eavesdropping it seems that they come here at least once a month, that sold me on the Glory of India as being my English curry house away from England.

That being said there are still more to try and Zac isn’t tired of curry… YET!

Rajdoot - but I’d really rather not… March 12, 2007

To escape the winter cold, and to celebrate the COMPLETION of someone’s demo reel (horray) I decided to treat my man to a curry.

 Unfortunately it was less of a treat than I had hoped.

 We wandered our way down 4th street with the address in hand (this time) to check out this place that Marta and Marshall had recommended oh so many moons ago. It was five and therefore we felt we had lots of time for our film that we wanted to go see at 7:30.

 We got in the door and found a dark and mildly welcoming interior with a bunch of waiters hanging around while a few tables ordered drinks and began looking at the menu. We were placed in a booth and much to Zac’s/my surprise, I ordered a beer, a small beer but I find I can manage about one Tiger beer before I find myself not liking it. (I avoid beer, the English ruined it for me generally but occasionally it is needed).

 Our beers arrived and we perused the menu, it wasn’t different from the curry places I had been to in England and so we decided to get the “mixed meat” starter followed by the lamb rogan josh some saag aloo and two different Naan breads (Zac wanted one, I wanted another so we decided to compromise). This is where the evening began to get weird, upon ordering the two Naans the waiter asked us if we were sure, I said yes and he impatiently said alright and took our order to the kitchen.

 We sat and chatted about the menu and I slowly drank my beer, the starter came and was alright, very  nice meat samosas, good tandoori chicken, what seemed to be a merguez sausage and that yummy chickpea and potato salad with crisp roti crumbled up (reminded me of potato salad with other things).  The starter was good, well, passable, but I was hungry and ready for a good munch so it definitely filled the post work hole.

At this point I had drained my beer and the waiter asked me for a refill, I declined and he seemed to get a little bit annoyed with me, very strange but I ignored it.

 Then we waited…

 and waited…

and waited.

 I had barely noticed what time it was until our mains arrived… 6:45… so unless we managed to devour the food in 15 minutes, there was no way that we were going to get to that movie on time.

 So we tucked into the rogan josh and the saag aloo, which were, disappointing, the curry had no heat to it, at all and furthermore it was actually cold. There is only so much heat a little tea light can produce and it cannot reheat a dish that has been sitting out for an extended period of time. Zac and I ate and had our two Naans (which were alright) and then waited for the bill. Paid and left.

 All in all I was disappointed as we didn’t get to a movie that night and the food wasn’t great. We then went back to Zac’s house, so that we could watch some form of film and chatted with his mom, she wasn’t at all surprised at our experience and apparently this place had been on the verge of being closed many times.

 Frankly, my thoughts are that if you’re going to get a curry, go somewhere else, this place isn’t that great and the service was annoying.

MMMM CURRY…(Mmmmango shiva) February 22, 2007

Having lived in London for a year and having a bit of a love affair with the nation and one of the nationals for some time helped to teach me to me appreciate a good Curry.

Coming back to Canada made me appreciate it a heck of a lot more.

It’s not that we don’t HAVE Indian restaurants but they don’t have the same feel or have the same gastronomic tendencies of those lovely restaurants that exist EVERYWHERE in the UK (this is in my experience although I’m pretty sure I didn’t see an Indian restaurant in the Yorkshire Dales/Lake District and that the distance/time makes the heart grow fonder). That being said I have made it a goal to find great curry restaurants in Calgary and I have been to a few and found that I have enjoyed most although parts of the meal maybe less than others.

A couple weeks ago after an array of directional and logistical errors (on my part) Zac and I found ourselves far away from the restaurant that we wanted to go to (an Indian on 4^th called Rajdoot of which I have heard great things) and very close to one of his old standbys that has become one of my new standbys (for lunch), Mango Shiva.

For those of you that don’t know, Mango Shiva does an amazing lunch buffet and it has become my ultimate place to go for comfort food/treats on a bad or busy day at work. The buffet is $14 per person and if you do like me and takeaway you can fill a Styrofoam container for 9$ (it’s amazing how much food I can manage to get in there). That being said I have never been for a proper meal and have enjoyed the thought as I had perused the menu in the past finding it to be quite different from the restaurants I had been to in
London.  

Firstly this isn’t what I know to be a traditional curry night out sort of place (the kind that the English tend to go to after a night of drunkenness and debauchery). The décor is beautiful with lovely contemporary colours which drastically go against my memories of the garish colours decorating the walls of the Indian restaurants I have been to in the past. It is intimate and lovely with the open kitchen being the centre of the restaurant.

We started with the Basil and Crab Samosas, to share (as we both weren’t TOO hungry and didn’t want to make this an expensive night), not too long after we ordered a beautifully presented plate with a couple of small triangular samosas and a tossed salad arrived. The Samosas were lovely and reminded me a bit of crab cakes, definitely not in a bad way, definitly not what I was used to but a very lovely starter that set the trend for the rest of the meal.

For mains we decided to get an individual curry bowl each, Zac opted for the the Tikka Masala with a skewer of Chicken and I chose (upon his recommendation) a Kashmiri Curry with a skewer of Lamb. We ordered a side of garlic Naan (yummy, there’s no real reason to discuss this I love Naan in all shapes and sizes and this was very good and very garlicky).

The presentation was beautiful, not that I was surprised following the starter. Again differing from my previous curry/Indian experience instead of the meat being stewed in the sauce they put a skewer of lamb on top of the creamy cashew sauce. The look was very clean and I appreciated the difference and use of colour on the plate, it was quite gorgeous.

The lamb was cooked perfectly and was wonderfully tender; a nicely browned outside with the center being pink, it was gorgeous. The Kashmiri sauce was creamy had a hint of heat but wasn’t over bearing and some chopped almonds scattered over the top added a very nice cruchy texture. Divine and lovely, from what I can tell Zac enjoyed his Chicken Tikka Masala as well; it was quickly and entirely devoured.

Zac opted to finish his meal with a Chai Tea from the Chai Bar they have there, I’ve had them before and can vouch their loveliness, very good with a lovely flavour of cardamom. I opted for a green tea and decided to try the chocolate samosas for dessert. While I like the idea and loved the presentation it wasn’t necessarily my most favourite dish, effectively this was a smaller version of a chocolate croissant with more chocolate and flakier pastry. Of course if you put another in front of me I wouldn’t say no, but it was lacking in substance, perhaps if they had let the samosas cool and served them with a warm dipping sauce I would have appreciated it more.

All in all it was a fantastic meal and the service was wonderful, it was never intrusive but friendly enough to make use feel welcome and put us at ease, something that has been lacking in our dining experience as of late (I blame the labour shortage, bad side of the boom :P).

Coming next is my review of Globefish Sushi and Towa sushi (we got into a sushi mood on Valentines day), The Last King of Scotland, some general musings on relationships, making cupcakes for Zac’s little bro’s birthday (next week EEP) and possibly a frantic post on what to wear to a hippy/dreadlocked wedding in the middle of the mountains ( I am thinking hemp based shopping trips and possibly using egg whites to make my hair look all funky and possibly dreadlocked :D)