Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

You know a place is good when you're standing outside, waiting for your fellow diners, and you overhear passersby saying things like, "This is my favorite ____ place!"  This was the case for me at Bhatti, and Indian restaurant in Curry Hill (geographically speaking, Murray Hill in the 20s and Lexington Avenue).  I noticed a lot of people entering while I stood outside and several people, in fact, spoke to each other in high praise of the restaurant while meandering past. The ambiance was a bit different from the Indian restaurants I'm used to.  It's more modern/edgy/romantic...definitely less traditional and homey and there was no Indian man dressed in traditional garb playing a sitar in the corner (this you might find in New York's Brick Lane, a.k.a. 6th Street area). We ordered a round of appetizers and entrees to share, including a dish of tandoori-roasted stuffed potatoes, paneer (Indian cheese), and an assortment of naan bread.  Our appetize...

I’m back from a family vacation to London and Paris.  What an exhilarating week!  I’ve been to London and Paris before, but it’s always great to return to places you love and places where you found love.  My parents have been to neither London nor Paris, though, so I was in charge of planning “Quintessential London” and “Quintessential Paris” tours.  Obviously, food played a major role in our experience of the local culture, so here is a recap of all the goodies we had!   I present to you: a multi-part series, my ode to London and Paris food.  (I actually originally wrote one enormous entry but I figured no one would read it, so here is "London".) From the first meal we had on this vacation, I was already excited and impressed.  On our  British Airways flight , they served chicken curry.  I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to have curry, and I was not disappointed.  The chicken was somewhere between a plain garam mas...

In celebration of American independence yesterday, we celebrated with dinner at India on the Hudson. We decided to watch Macy's Fireworks Spectacular from Hoboken, NJ so that we could see the beautiful New York City skyline while the fireworks exploded.  And boy, do I mean exploded!  If you see fireworks in real life, you see the bright lights flash, followed by streaks of falling color, followed even afterwards by the resounding cracks and booms: as I tried to follow the explosions, I remembered that light travels faster than sound.  It was crowded, it was hot and humid as hell, but it was absolutely worth it. Before the show, though, we had an amazing dinner of Indian food right near the water front at India on the Hudson.  This tiny restaurant served us dishes with bold, zesty flavors and has set me on a cravings rampage ever since. They gave us papadum with the usual trio of chutneys and sauces.  The papadum had caraway seeds baked in and were per...

In London, there's an Indian restaurant called Humaira Tandoori that serves a buffet dinner on Saturdays for £5.99 (about $10).  Whenever anyone goes to London on holiday, I recommend Humaira and I only wish I had gone to eat there more.  We'd gotten big groups together there before for Saturday night dinners, particularly one memorable time when a big group of us already occupied one large table right in the middle of the small dining room and another group of friends came later and had to wait for the table.  Good stuff, worth the wait! So, to celebrate our graduation, several of us decided to relive those dinners and have a meal at Punjabi Tadka up on the northern edge of Hell's Kitchen.  We had heard great reviews of the place, which was truthfully just a small dingy restaurant with plastic cups and Styrofoam plates.  Somehow our cheerful spirit and the magic of Indian food made up for the ambiance. Punjabi Tadka has a dinner "buffet" special th...