Indian Versus

Eastside’s Indian food scene has been exploding by the minute.

Established restaurants such as Mayuri, competing with vegetarian restaurants such as Udupi and Bombay House, and new places such as Chaat House and Chick and Fish, choices are endless!

Recently we ventured out to two other Indian restaurants in town.

First up, Oh! India for a late buffet lunch.

They have locations, one inside Crossroad Mall’s food court, and the other one right outside the Mall as the full restaurant.

We considered coming here because we actually ordered a shrimp curry and fish curry from them one night for dinner and found them quite delicious.

It came with regular rice which was good, and tamarind rice which was very salty.

Well, we thought we could give them a chance for lunch as well.

The variety for the buffet was fairly good.

Naan was unfortunately very greasy, and some of the papadam was soggy.

Their dosa had no filling.

Oh! India’s chicken kabob had high cumin flavor and was very good; curry was not bad either; butter chicken was very sweet.

Their chai was very astringent, and Lipton-like black tea flavor.

We got a hint to leave when they turned off the light on us as a signal; I would prefer them actually talk to us rather than having this feeling of passive-aggressiveness.

Needless to say, our experience was so-so, and food was not as good as our selective take-outs.

Second restaurant we tried was Moghul Palace, came highly recommended by our friends.

My friend really love their meatballs with masala sauce, tomato-ey and garlicky, with very tender meat, they were really good.

Baighan bharta was delicious, and I love the brown spices and spiciness in the Jalfrazie — we opted for fish and the fish was tender and tasty.

Chili masala was glorious with wonderful aromatics.

Since dinner was very good, I had to go try their lunch buffet, but was a little disappointed mainly due to the small selections.

Perhaps I was there too late, but there was only meatballs, Tandoori chicken, mango chicken curry, with some salads, rice, a chickpeas curry and a stir fry vegetables.

I was spoiled by Udupi with Chais, dosas, papadams, and all kinds of breads, and Bombay House would also have Chai and soup; and Kanishka has a really good spread of food — so Mogul’s buffet just felt a little small.

Nonetheless, food was great still, and I will be returning to Moghul.

I am afraid I cannot say the same sentiment go for Oh! India when there are other much better Indian options to fill my tummy!

Guilt Trip

Pork in Indian Food? What???

I remembered our trip to India a while back, and initially found it interesting that restaurants serve only chicken, goat and lamb along with seafood.

Then, it dawned on us that the no beef and no pork policy was for the majority Hindu, and largest minority Muslim population in India.

Most Indian restaurants in the States also follows that rule — except Guilt Trip in Redmond, striking out as the rule-breaker.

We went for lunch at off hours, so it was quite quiet.

The menu is full of interesting dishes to try, and they have a chai bar and a lassi bar, which I will be back for.

At the Chai bar, they offer the Kashmiri chai which has no milk, and 4 kinds of chais with different spice combinations.

The Lassi bar is even more adventurous, with flavors such as apple pie, saffron almond, tamarind date and mango chili.

The prominent pork in the restaurant comes in the form of bacon.

There was a blue cheese bacon naan, and bacon butter chicken, which we ordered.

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Chaat House

Chaat House opened several months ago in Bellevue, competing with the many Indian restaurants in the neighborhood; yet it is certainly great that we have another vegetarian establishment.

As the name suggested, Chaat House offers many Chaat, Indian street food, including puri (fried bread), samosa and pav bhaji; they also serve Indian pizza, thali (rice with entrees) and parantha (flat bread).

The most exciting piece of equipment I saw in the store was the fresh sugar cane juicer.

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Japanese Sandwiches and Kanishka

First ever Japanese sandwich place in the greater Seattle area!

Sandwich House TRES took over the former Bellevue Fuji Bakery space; an absolutely simple and no-frills store, there are both sweet and savory sandwiches for sale.

When I stepped into the store, I felt as if I was beamed to Japan!

Some traditional meat offering such as tonkatsu, fried pork cutlet, and fried shrimp, along with western options of BLT and chicken salad.

Vegetarian options include burdock root and potato salad, and very interesting yakisoba; and flavors like red beans and chocolate banana round out the sweet side of the equation.

All sandwiches are made traditionally with crust-trimmed white bread, individually wrapped in their clear plastic wrap.

L: fried shrimp — M: tonkatsu — R: fried white fish

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Coconut Chia Seed Muffin and Dakshin

First time using coconut flour!

Since I knew nothing about it, the safest bet was to follow the recipe on the packaging.

I made coconut chia seed muffins with blueberries.

No recipe at this time because I did not feel the muffins were the best — experimentation still required.

The coconut muffins came out to have very interesting texture.

It was soft and airy but springy at the same time.

The coconut flour packaging had touted its high fiber content.

Coupled with chia seeds which also had high fiber content, the muffins were very fibrous, as if I was chewing celery.

If a muffin could be crunchy, I would have used that term!

I had adjusted the sweetness for personal preference so it was not too sweet.

Using the coconut flour was difficult.

The recipe called for sifting the flour first.

However, fibrous flour had high particle size which made it extremely difficult to sift.

I stood sifting until I ran out of patience, and had DH helped me sifted while I prepared other ingredients!

beige color coconut flour

resulting dough that was quite runny

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