Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

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...