ottawa foodies

After a disappointing experience with Indian food in London (yes, London UK) I had an urge to try out India Palace based on comments last year by Johnny English. We weren't terribly hungry so tried out the same two dishes that Johnny spoke about, chicken jalfrezzi and lamb madras.

The dining room is tired beyond belief, more so than Little India Cafe in that it tries whereas the latter is simply a tiny box with tables and chairs left over from a 1970s political convention. In fact, walking in the door, being greeted by the washrooms and then hanging a left to enter the dining room, I checked my smartphone to make sure we were in the right place.

While I'm not certain if I'm ready to confer India Place with the title of the 'best Indian food in Ottawa', the chicken jalfrezzi was a dish I'd never had and just fantastic, so good that I was thinking about it the next day, and ours came with whole chili peppers as well as being cooked in ghee. I had mentioned to the server that we like our food spicy and was told "you're food will be spicy" and lo and behold it was. The lamb madras was very good but not as much of a WOW as the chicken. Again I've never had lamb madras before, but to my palate this dish was more about the heat than the flavour, and the pieces of lamb were a bit tougher than I was expecting.

While I quite enjoyed the meal, I have to admit that the dining room was off-putting in a debbie downer kind of way. Certainly this is somewhere to eat downtown if you don't mind the tired interior and kitschy music. But myself, I think I will likely try and get a seat at Little India Cafe my next time I'm craving Indian food.

I've been here quite a bit for the lunch buffet, as my office is nearby, and think it's a good reliable choice at reasonable prices. The buffet items, in my opinion, rival a la carte options at a lot of other Indian places in town and there are a lot of good vegetarian options if you're travelling in mixed company, so to speak. The zucchini lentil curry, dry beef and spinach curry and tandoori chicken I had last week were especially tasty. The lentils had great texture but were falling apart enough to give the curry a nice creaminess, the beef was nicely spiced and the tandoori chicken was moist and flavourful.

I stopped by India Palace last week on my way back from the gym. I was impressed by the price, quantity and the food. Although India Palace is not even close to the 'best' Indian food I have had, I was satisfied with the taste and quality (for the most part). Also, after checking Ottawa eatsafe, I was reassured that India Palace has a pretty clean record.

I ordered the Rhada-Krisna special which consisted of 2 vegetable samosas, 5 or six slices of onion bhaji, iceberg salad (with tomatoes and cucumbers), a huge vegetable biryani, mutter paneer, sag aloo bhaji, an onion kulcha (naan topped with garlic, onion and cilantro), 2 papadums and 2 pieces of galub jamun. Holy Maven! (which is a fitting exclamation seeing as though this combo is called the Krisna special lol). This is so much food! When I picked it up, it was given to me in 2 huge paper bags that were very heavy. All of this was 31 dollars plus tax. Finally, a quantity to price ratio that I am comfortable with (that is, in relation to other Indian restaurants).

The samosas were spicy and tasty, however I would guess that they were not made fresh to order. They were good non the less. I would say the same thing about the onion bhaji's but again, they were satisfying. The big winner was the biryani which was HUGE. Just this alone could feed someone for 2 maybe 3 meals. It was fresh, spicy, filled with nuts and raisins and just over all, really yummy. I am also a big fan of the mutter paneer. It was creamy, spicy and had a copious amount of cheese.

I was less then impressed with the sag aloo bhaji, which I found to be oily. I would bet money that it wasn't very fresh and it might have been microwaved. I also found it too salty. So if you order this special, I would recommend substituting this for something else (this is what I will do next time). Nonetheless, this Rhada-krisna special would still be worth while without the sag aloo bhaji.

The onion kulcha was something new for me. Essentially it is just a flavored naan. Garlic, butter, cilantro and onion = a great flavour combo. The naan was fresh! The papadums were great too – but these are hard to screw up. I am not a big fan of Galub Jamun because they are too sweet. That being said, they taste similar to galub jamun's that I have tried at other places. Indian sweets are are weird and in general, too sweet for me.

This special lasted me multiple meals (which is a lot considering the fact that I didn't eat the sag aloo bhaji). I think I ate 3 full meals, and a few snacks in between. I really enjoyed this meal(s) and I will be back for takeout again.