{"id":820,"date":"2008-05-15T17:11:57","date_gmt":"2008-05-16T03:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studionewmedia.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/15\/india-cafe\/"},"modified":"2008-05-15T17:11:57","modified_gmt":"2008-05-16T03:11:57","slug":"india-cafe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/2008\/05\/15\/india-cafe\/","title":{"rendered":"India Caf\u00c3\u00a9"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"India<\/a>\"Papadums<\/a>Two Thursdays ago, Root, Fabio, JT and I went to India Caf\u00c3\u00a9 in Kilohana Square for dinner. There was a lot of post-meal e-mail chatter about what we experienced the following day, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll try and distill all of that down in this review. It was our first time there with the exception of JT, who had been there on several occasions. Fabio had eaten at the campus franchise a few times, but the offerings and presentation are different. There was a full menu with appetizers, main courses and desserts. There is no alcohol served, but you are allowed to bring your own. As soon as we were seated and received our menus, we were brought some papadums<\/em> (fried spiced lentil wafers). JT said he usually just gets the vegetarian meal, which is a combination set with four curries and sides. There was also a set with a meat dishes, vegetarian dishes and sides. We decided to get the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dinner set for four\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which was an all-inclusive meal including four entr\u00c3\u00a9e choices. <\/p>\n

\"Mango<\/a>JT and I ordered lassis<\/em> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c blueberry and mango, respectively. These were served \u00e2\u20ac\u0153on the rocks\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and not blended. My mango one wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t particularly good \u00e2\u20ac\u201c probably the source of the mango flavoring was the culprit. The general consensus was the blueberry one was significantly better. I give the mango lassi a C-<\/p>\n

\"Appetizer<\/a>The first part of our meal to arrive was the appetizer plate. There was some kind of spongy, pan-fried bread, some rice dumplings, and samosas<\/em>. Sorry, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember the names of everything\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Accompanying these were a sweet chili sauce and coconut chutney. The bread was bread – unmemorable. The rice dumplings were ricey \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I did like these. The samosas were good. The potato filling was well-flavored and the shell crispy. I liked them a lot more than the ones I had in Japan at Taj Mahal<\/a><\/em>. Overall, I give the appetizers a B-. Around this time we were brought more papadums. These were again very good.<\/p>\n

\"Curries\"<\/a>\"All<\/a>Our main dishes arrived. The first was spicy eggplant. Not quite eggplant bharta<\/em>, since the individual eggplant pieces were still intact and cohesive. It was indeed spicy, but other than the heat, it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really taste like anything. I give it a C. The next was okra curry. Fabio thought it tasted odd, but I thought it was fine. The flavor was very good, but the okra itself was either overripe or overcooked \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it seemed a bit soft to me. I give it a B+. Next was our favorite chana masala<\/em> (chickpea curry). The texture was good, but a bit on the dry side. The flavoring was good, but after plating a second helping, it became clear that it was very salty. I give it a C+. The meaty entr\u00c3\u00a9e was squid curry. Little squid were cut into pieces and stewed in a yellow curry sauce. The curry flavor was very good. The squid consistency was good \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not rubbery. The squid flavor was a bit on the squiddy side \u00e2\u20ac\u201c perhaps the critters were a little on the old (as in not fresh<\/em>, not as in not young<\/em>) side. I give it a B-. All of this was served with a large helping of yellow basmati rice. The rice was a bit on the sticky side, marginally better than when we tried to cook the store-bought packets in a rice cooker at Wayland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. A mint chutney and a yogurt\/cucumber sauce were served on the side. The mint chutney was very good, but it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go well with the squid.<\/p>\n

\"Dessert\"<\/a>Now that we were all painfully full, along came dessert! Since it was closing time and we had ordered the jumbo meal, they threw in some bonus dessert stuff too. There was no way we could finish it all even as we tried hard to. There were some tapioca pudding things with whipped topping. They were flavored with rose water, so they tasted like soap to me. There was one of those flat bread things with a scoop of ice cream and chocolate syrup drizzled on top. That was good. The last was a large bowl of cinnamon-spiced rice pudding with raisins. That was good also, but the deeper one got, the sweet and cinnamon flavor decreased. In all, I give the desserts a C+<\/p>\n

The following day, we all noticed the effects of the high sodium content. It was nowhere near as bad as Maharani<\/a><\/em>. JT said that the food was better on previous occasions. I wonder if our level of satisfaction would have been better had we chosen some different dishes? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll give them another shot someday. Of the four Indian places I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve tried in Hawaii, they are somewhere in the middle.<\/p>\n

Acceptable \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d consider going back again.<\/p>\n

Two out of four grinning monkeys<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two Thursdays ago, Root, Fabio, JT and I went to India Caf\u00c3\u00a9 in Kilohana Square for dinner. There was a lot of post-meal e-mail chatter about what we experienced the following day, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll try and distill all of that down in this review. It was our first time there with the exception of JT, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,13],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJYlx-de","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}