38. Passage to India
Well folks, I think it’s finally happened. I’m an Indian food convert. Now I have to first explain where I was pre-Passage to India. It’s not that I hated Indian food (commenters, ahem, I’m talking to you); it’s just that I never ate it much and never quite knew what to order. I’m not a fan of curry, but somehow I always ended up with a curry heavy dish. Hence, me no likely. Well thanks to the Washingtonian recommendations and some very patient friends, I’ve amassed a repertoire of Indian dishes that are curry-free and tasty-full.
I went to Passage to India last night with my friend Lauren, who has been loving their chicken tikki masala for a while now. She didn’t even look at the menu, but I needed to do a pretty serious once-over on it before I made my choices. The menu is kind of confusing to those of us new to Indian cuisine—there’s a starter section, then four sections of geographically specific dishes, then the tandoor dishes, then the breads and accompaniments. It’s a lot to look at. I let Washingtonian be my guide and ended up with sev-murmura chaat as an appetizer and the Parsi lamb stew for my dinner. Lauren had the chicken tikki masala, duh. Oh and two orders of naan, NBD.
The appetizer was my favorite thing that came across our table the whole night. Now, since I don’t know my Indian foods too well, here is my layman’s interpretation: rice crispies, dates, dried vermicelli in a spicy sauce all housed in a little taco salad shell. The sauce was so wonderful—smokey and spicy and sweet all at the same time. And having the little puffed rice bits in there gave it a wonderful crunch. More crunch came by way of the dried vermicelli, but as Lauren pointed out, it sort of felt like uncooked Top Ramen was just thrown on before the dish came out of the kitchen. But I just stirred it up and let the noodles soak up the sauce and all was right with the world.
For my dinner I had the Parsi lamb stew, which I thought was great. The lamb was cooked to the textbook definition of tender, and the dried apricot pieces were unexpected and wonderful. The sauce that the stew was served in was nice, though it was guilty of one of my food gross-outs: when the fat in a sauce separates after it sits a while. I’ll blame it on the fact that I didn’t eat fast enough though, so I won’t hold it against them.
Lauren was in love with her chicken (no surprise there) and I was also a big fan of the garlic naan. It was mighty garlicky, but I wasn’t planning on smooching Lauren so I dug in to it. And soaking up the extra stew with my garlicky bread was quite delicious.
Passage to India isn’t going to win any awards for it’s decor—it evokes 80s banquet hall, and my tablecloth had a cigarette burn on it. (How long has it been since you could smoke in restaurants??) But what you don’t get in ambiance, they make up for in value. We ordered tons of food and our bill was less than $50. And I was way more than $25 worth of full. So there you go readers of the Internet, Indian food and me, we’re friends now.
