Where’s the beef?
Tonight I wasn’t sure what to do about dinner, and in a moment’s insanity, decided to head over to the new kid on the block, Taj Palace, and get some take-out. Taj Palace is not extremely new — they’ve been there for months, and I’ve been eyeing them warily from the safety of Wibbleys across the parking lot.
I have two complaints about Indian food. One is the price. It’s possible that I’m being unreasonable here, after all, Indian food is covered in expensive spices, and I’m sure it takes a long time to cook. The other complaint is the saltiness of the food. Most Indian curry that I’ve eaten tastes like eating a big bowl of salt. Salt should not count as a spice.
Anyway, I drove over to Taj Palace to try the place out for myself (after trying and failing to find more than a couple of blogger reviews on the place). I found the takeout menu as soon as I walked in the door, and perched on the sofa to check it out. A sweet young waitress walked over to greet me, and offered to bring me some water while I was deciding what to order.
I looked for my standby dish, aloo gobi — it’s pretty hard to mess up a cauliflower and potato curry — and although it’s listed on a lot of menus, it wasn’t listed on this one. I fell back to my other usual dish, the chicken tikka masala, and ordered up a beef curry for the husband. Then, for kicks, I asked for an order of samosa (they only list vegetable samosas, no meat), some naan bread, and a gulab jamun for dessert. After a 15-minute wait, the food came out and I was on my way, minus about 34 dollars.
Upon my arrival back home, I found a set of takeout cartons, carefully wrapped in gladwrap. How novel. So if your food turns upside down in your car, it can’t come out and attack your upholstery. I also found they had neglected to give me my naan bread. How… novel. I haven’t had to double-check a takeout order since I stopped going to McDonalds. Remember when McDonalds used to put those stickers on the takeout bags saying that they had double-checked your order? So I called up the restaurant and told them I was coming back to get them (and my naan bread, too). The manager made sure I got a double order of naan and threw in a Kheer Badami (rice pudding) so that I wouldn’t smile my patented Smile Of Death on them.
I ate my Galub Jamun dessert first. Althought it’s traditionally served warm, I found that mine was… refrigerator-cold. I have mixed feelings about take-out that isn’t at the correct temperature. It’s not that much trouble to nuke it, but what if you’re having a picnic in the park, or you’re in a hotel room without a microwave? Other than that, my dessert was quite nice.
The samosas were good as well. The crispy outer skin was shell-thin. But the tamarind chutney was thin. In fact, it was thinner than most beer. By the time I got to the curries I was half full. I noticed first that they did not skimp on the rice. Turning my attention to the main dishes, I found out what they did skimp on. A small handful of beef chunks were drowning in a pool of curry sauce. There must have been all of… 6 ounces of beef, maybe? It looked like there was a small teacup of beef sitting in two cups of curry. There was maybe two-thirds as much beef as there was chicken. That’s right. If you’re looking for sheer protein volume, step away from the beef. Order up some chicken instead. It’s a bit dry, but there’s definitely more of it.
What about that troublesome naan bread? It probably wasn’t worth the extra drive back. I like my naan bread toothsome (so it can soak up the sauce), and these were sort of uneven. However, there was a double helping of them, so I tore off all the toothsome parts which left me with a pile of unabsorbent cardboardy parts.
Final verdict? It’s a lukewarm review, I know, but here it is: Taj Palace does not suck. But in the past, I’ve had Indian food so good it made me cry. It makes me try, and try again, and then complain all the more.
Related posts:
Next time you want to try Indian Restaurant check out
http://www.SeattleIndian.com for reviews and coupons
[skye's reply: I've actually looked briefly at that site. I'm philosophically against sites with pop-up ads, so even with their assurance that I wouldn't be spammed, I decided against registering with them. I'm therefore unable to look at any content.]