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Joy of India
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| A Sino-Indian Rapprochement | Can Three Billion People be Wrong? | |
| B and I, along
with our significant others, were in Montreal last weekend on a
food-forward trip, one which had more than its fair share of successful
restaurant excursions (I recommend Les Caprices de Nicolas in
particular). A The Lunch outing in between this trip and
Thanksgiving seemed anticlimactic and difficult to pull off. But B had
planned a lunch with a friend and former colleague and we decided,
rather than take the week off, to use the occasion for a review. B and
his friend had already settled on the venue, so that choice, which has
been becoming an increasingly difficult one as we check off, week by
week, most of the places we have on our mental lists, was already made.
(Over the last few months, the logistical challenge of coming up with a
review-worthy restaurant that’s somewhere in between Minneapolis and
Eden Prairie has been taxing too.)
The Joy of India is situated in a strip mall in Plymouth, in the northwest quadrant of the intersection of Highways 169 and 55. I used to work not far from this area, which in the course of the few years in the late 1980s I saw being transformed from undeveloped open land to a large commercial center. It’s now expanded beyond when I last was in it, with a huge parking area within which it’s all too easy to lose one’s bearings. I had a strange sense of déjà vu on entering Joy. The restaurant is relatively new—it opened in May 2002—but it’s in the same space that used to house a Chinese restaurant when the mall area first opened. It was a popular choice for going-away lunches for coworkers at our office, and if I recall correctly for a while it was a Mongolian-style restaurant too, one of those places where you pile a plate up with ingredients from a buffet line and then hand it to be cooked into a customized meal. Even the décor seems unchanged from those days, although it’s not as if it looks moth-eaten. Perhaps that’s the advantage of not opting for high-design custom furnishings; if every restaurant in every strip mall goes with the same line of products it won’t be discontinued anytime soon! The Chinese influences are still there too, from some of the art on the walls to the menu itself which gives "Oriental selections" at the back with an unimaginative assortment of fried rice, chow mein, sweet and sour chicken/pork/shrimp, lemon chicken, sesame chicken/beef, etc. There’s one thing in common between most Indian and Chinese restaurants, and that’s the concept of a long, multipage menu with several dishes in each of several categories—beef, chicken, rice, lamb, seafood, vegetarian. Joy’s categories also include tandoori dishes (a "tandoor" being a clay oven commonly used in north Indian cooking) and special breads—where in addition to the usual rotis and naans you’ll also find the basic-but-rare-in-American-restaurants chapati as well as Peshawari naan (a tandoori naan with a nut and raisin filling). Although the majority of the menu is north Indian/Punjabi, four types of dosas, south Indian crepes made of ground rice and lentils with usually vegetable stuffings, are also listed. Joy has four of these, the standard masala dosa, with potato and onion filling, paneer dosa, with homemade cheese, egg dosa, and a special dosa with mixed vegetables. In addition to the individual entrée choices, "dinner for two" combination platters are also available, including a tandoori dinner, a biryani dinner (biryani: a saffron-infused rice dish usually containing meat and nuts), and a vegetarian dinner. The restaurant also offers beer and wine, the former including a couple of Indian beers and the latter including four by-the-glass pours each of red and white wine. In addition, some Indian beverages are also available, including lassi, the yoghurt drink, in plain-sweetened and fruit-flavored versions. Salty lassi is not available. For lunch a buffet is in operation. Both B and his friend took advantage of this and I’ll leave it to B to evaluate its merits. I ordered from the menu, opting for an appetizer of "mutton" samosas (two to an order) and the masala dosa. A plate of excellent Indian bread, tandoori roti, was included in the meal. It’s not the easiest thing to get mutton (the meat of a mature sheep) in this country although it’s common enough in India and Pakistan. In Joy’s menu, the mutton samosa is described as lamb-filled. A samosa is a small deep-fried roughly triangular dough shell that can be filled with ground meat or vegetables. It usually serves as a popular between-meal savory pick-me-up in parts of India and Pakistan. Getting the dough flaky and crispy, turning a deep fried object into something that’s close to nongreasy, can be difficult but when accomplished can result in an extraordinarily tasty snack. Joy’s were quite good, especially the dough part. They were, however, overly stuffed with ground lamb and peas and the lamb had the aroma that turns some people off the meat (perhaps it really was mutton!). A spicier filling mixture would probably have helped. The samosas came with two kinds of sauces, probably mint and dried plum. I’m no expert on dosas, and my principal point of comparison is to those served by Udupi on Central Avenue. A well-traveled colleague originally from that part of the subcontinent once asserted that Udupi was the best south Indian restaurant in the U.S. Although I have no basis for seconding that judgement, I have found the dosas there quite remarkable—golden, crisp-yet-pliable, flavorful and aromatic. The masala dosa at Joy didn’t attain the same heights although it was acceptable. The dosa came with sambel, a thin yellow lentil soup with onions and garlic. The Minnesotan palate has become sophisticated enough that Asian restaurants need no longer spice down their offerings. This realization eludes Joy. Although I had asked for medium-hot levels of spiciness, both the samosas and the dosa were more mild than medium. Joy hasn’t resolved lack of an outstanding purveyor of north Indian food in the Twin Cities, but on the whole I was content enough with my meal. Of course, a couple of dishes out of 150 plus is an insufficient sample to pass judgement on—although since when have notions of statistical validity figured in our reckonings! A |
In this
world there are two huge swathes of humanity: Peoples Republic of China
and India – between them they account for a quarter of all people.
This fact has not escaped the proprietors of what was previously The
Joy Luck Wok, a rather unfortunately named Chinese restaurant, which
has recently been reincarnated as The Joy of India and is the
venue for The Lunch this week.
What was once a straightforward Chinese restaurant, catering to the gargantuan appetites of the suburban lunch buffet goer, is now an Indo-Chinese restaurant. I should clarify—before the reader has mouth-watering (but incorrect) visions of cuisine from the Far East (Indonesia, Malaysia, and etc)—this is more a case of offering two distinct menus (Indian on one side, Chinese on the other) rather than a fusion. The name Joy of India is hardly an improvement over the original. I can imagine some of the telephone calls received: "Hello – do you carry a copy of the Kama Sutra?" "Nehin! Biryani yes. Sex no." replies an exasperated worker for the tenth time. But seriously see my rant elsewhere about unimaginative Indian restaurant names. The location is a strip mall that boasts, among other things, a Rainbow Foods store. The restaurant is very functional with simple table seating; the buffet table dominates all else. There is no pretense of transporting the diner to an exotic eastern locale nor (mercifully) is there any attempt to set a mood. This means there is no piped sitar music or Mughal miniatures on the wall. The purpose here is to engage in serious eating, and for that the place is well setup. I have to praise the menu, which is quite extensive, and provides South Indian dishes like Dosa (crepes filled with potatoes and vegetables) alongside the much better known North Indian dishes. The Indian side of the menu is split into sections by meat (chicken, beef, and lamb), vegetarian and specialty dishes. Some of the dishes that caught my attention: Chicken Makhani (tender boneless pieces of tandoori chicken, cooked in fresh tomato sauce, with touch of light cream and imported seasonings), Chicken Shahi Korma (royal dish of chicken cooked with chunks of paneer, in creamy sauce and gamishede with cashews and raisins), Chicken Bhuna (boneless chicken pieces cooked in fresh fried onions, in a flavorful curry sauce) and Rogan Josh (lean cooked lamb, cooked in yogurt sauce and special spices). The Chinese side is just as extensive and varied with chicken, beef, pork, chow mein and seafood. For a change A & I were joined by another friend who works in the neighborhood. I opted for the (gasp!) buffet, whereas A wanted to try the Dosas and hence ordered from the menu. Another praiseworthy thing about this place is that hot roti is bought to your table and needn’t be fetched from the buffet line. The buffet is a combination of Indian and Chinese (as you might expect) but doesn’t have the variety of the menu. I started with the ubiquitous Chinese appetizer, the egg roll, which was crisp and spicy followed by a couple of cream cheese puffs. The pot stickers also looked good. For my main course I had Indian: Basmati rice with chicken makhani that was dangerously swimming in butter but was tasty nevertheless. The food had a little more spice and kick to it than what you might find at The Taste of India but again more would be better. I finished my meal with a Gulab Jaman, a deep fried Indian doughnut, which tastes better than it sounds. There being no espresso machine meant that A couldn’t have his normal cup, besides an espresso after Dosas! Surely not. Our bill for three came to $27.00. If you insist upon an Indian lunch buffet this is the place to come. It’s miles better than The Taste of India or New Delhi Restaurant.This past weekend A, his wife, yours truly, and my significant other went for a long weekend to Montreal. What a wonderful city! Full of excellent French restaurants, bakeries and little neighborhood butchers, cheese shops and produce stores. In the streets you hear a murmur of a foreign language (French) yet the locals will speak perfect North American English when they realize that you don’t speak any French. If you want a European experience so close to home I suggest you visit Montreal. You can have a French experience without the difficulties of France, i.e., the French! B
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