Here, in an effort to get done with my reports on meals eaten out in Delhi in March, is a quick look at another meal I ate on this trip in Humayunpur. If you’ve been following my Delhi reports over the years—or if you know Delhi well—you know that Humayunpur, a village incorporated into South Delhi, is one of the major hubs of North Eastern Indian life in Delhi. It is home to a large number of people from the North Eastern states and it also contains stores that serve them, and an ever-growing number of restaurants that serve their foods. It has become my very favourite part of Delhi to eat in. When I lived in India, I knew very little of the foods of North Eastern India beyond Assam, and now I feel like I am making up for lost time. I ate lunch by myself in Humayunpur in the first week of this trip. That was an excellent Naga lunch at a tiny restaurant named Shilloi. The next week, just a couple of days before my return to Minnesota, I was back to eat another Naga lunch, this time with a friend at NCC. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Indian Food
6 Ballygunge Place (Delhi, March 2025)
About two and a half decades ago a wave of high’ish end traditional Bengali restaurants opened in Calcutta/Kolkata. This was a significant development for a number of reasons. For one thing it was a marker of how regional Indian food was beginning to be marketed to wealthy Indians as they looked for more ways to spend the greater disposable income they had in the era of the liberalization of the economy. Rather than foreign or Mughlai or Chinese food, it was now regional food that began to become a viable market proposition. For another, it was also a sign of transformations in the domestic sphere for Bengalis in the middle class and above: more and more younger women were in the workplace, the grip of the joint family was loosening. Among the effects were breaks in the transmission of traditional cooking and recipes in the patriarchal household. The new restaurants increasingly became the places where the Bengali leisure class went to eat dishes that a generation prior would have been made at home, either on special occasions or more regularly. Continue reading
Cafe Lota VIII (Delhi, March 2025)
In December I broke my streak of eating at Cafe Lota on every trip to Delhi in the last decade or so. I didn’t have so much time on that brief visit, which included a sojourn to Coonoor for a few days, to eat at all my favourite restaurants; and since we’d eaten at Cafe Lota as a family last March, I gave it a miss. But when I returned this March for two weeks I made it a priority to get back there. I met a friend for lunch there who I/we usually meet for lunch there. As it was just the two of us, we couldn’t do a whole lot of damage. But that’s not to say that we did not have much to eat. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Fort City (Delhi, March 2025)
Here’s something a little different from my normal Delhi reports. Last week I met up with some old high school friends and they suggested a brewpub in South Delhi to hang out at. To be specific, Fort City Brewing, which is located in the Hauz Khas market. Now, I don’t generally drink a lot of beer or hang out in brewpubs back in the US, but I do have an anthropological interest in these developments in Delhi, and so I agreed readily to the location. Named for the large number of medieval forts that iconically dot the landscape of Delhi, Fort City is apparently the only pub/bar in Delhi that brews their own beer. I believe they opened for business in 2023. In less than two years they’ve acquired a strong reputation and a faithful local following. They were named the best microbrewery in India for 2024 by some publication or the other, and have picked up a number of other plaudits as well. They serve a range of their own beers and a range of food besides. What did I make of it? Read on. Continue reading
Shilloi (Delhi, March 2025)
In my most recent report on meals at Matamaal—the Kashmiri restaurant in Gurgaon—I noted that eating there has become a ritual on my/our recent trips to Delhi. So too has eating in Humayunpur Market, one of the major centers of North East Indian life in Delhi, especially of North Indian cuisine. The market is dotted with restaurants, small and large, that serve the cuisines of most of the states east of Bangladesh (I’ve not yet come across any references to restaurants serving the food of Tripura), along with Tibetan, Nepali, Korean and various East Asian cuisines. On my visit to Delhi in December I ate a Nepali lunch at Bhansaghar and an Arunachali lunch at Arunachali Sajolang. Both were excellent. Away from Humayunpur, I also ate an excellent Naga lunch at Dzükou in Vasant Kunj. I was hellbent on eating Naga food again on this trip and this time I fulfilled that desire in Humayunpur, at a small restaurant named Shilloi. Continue reading
Matamaal III & IV (Gurgaon, Dec ’24/Mar ’25)
Eating at Matamaal has become a ritual on my/our trips to Delhi. We first ate there (twice) in January 2023 and then in March 2024. When I was in Delhi by myself in December, I dutifully went and ate there again by myself. And now that I’m in Delhi again by myself, it’s no surprise that I was back there again. That was yesterday. Here is a combined report on that lunch and my meal there in December (which I’d forgotten to previously report on).
By the way, as I’ve noted before, I use the name “Delhi” in my restaurant reports to refer more broadly to the National Capital Region, which includes the contiguous cities of Gurgaon (in the state of Haryana) and Noida (in the state of Uttar Pradesh). Matamaal is located in Gurgaon in the City Court mall. Or rather, that’s where the flagship location that we visit is located. At some point in the period since our first visit they’ve opened locations in Greater Kailash I in Delhi, in Noida, and even one in Pune. As to whether these locations are branches or franchise operations, I’m not sure. My reports shouldn’t be seen as indicative of the quality of the food anywhere other than at the flagship location. At that location I’m yet to have a bad meal, as my recent lunches in the last three months demonstrate. Continue reading
India Market (Eden Prairie, MN)
As I said on Sunday in my look back/look ahead post, we didn’t go out to eat last weekend. And so I do not have a Twin Cities restaurant report this week. I do have a Twin Cities food report though, albeit on a market. It’s been a while since I last reported on an immigrant grocery store in the Twin Cities (Bodega 42 in Apple Valley). The one before that was my last report on an Indian grocery. That was a look at Spice Bazaar in Lake Elmo off Highway 94, which turned into India Market. Today I have a look at the other location of India Market, out in the western suburbs. This is the original location which has been in Eden Prairie since 2018. As with the newer Lake Elmo location, it is a very large store, containing within it both a butcher counter and a cafe with a fairly extensive menu. I’ve shopped there a few times before/after other appointments in the area (usually after a lunch thali at Godavari). This look at the market is put together from pictures taken on a couple of these visits in the last year and a half. I cannot promise that the layout of the store now is exactly as pictured—it changed a bit between my last two visits—but this should give you a pretty good idea of what you can expect to find there: in short, pretty much everything you need if you’re interested in cooking Indian food. Continue reading
Hotel Ramachandra (Coonoor, Dec 2024)
Here, finally, is my final meal report from my solo trip to India in December. I spent most of the two weeks I was there in Delhi, and all of my other reports have been from there. I did also take a three-day trip to Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on college business. I was staying with an old friend while there and ate almost all my meals at her house, courtesy her wonderful cook. The one exception was this lunch in the town of Coonoor (my friend lives 40 minutes away from the town) at the one restaurant she insisted I eat at: Hotel Ramachandra. It was a rather excessive meal but also a very good one. Here, very quickly, is a look at it. Continue reading
Carnatic Cafe III (Delhi, December 2024)
My first three meal reports from my recent solo trip to Delhi were of lunches at which I ate thalis: at Arunachali Sajolang, Bhansaghar and Zambar. There were, in fact, only two meals I ate out that did not involve thalis. One was my lunch at Dzükou, and the other was this lunch at Carnatic Cafe. This is my third report over the years of meals eaten at Carnatic Cafe. The first was from their original Friends Colony location (since closed); the second was from the Greater Kailash II location. This meal took me to yet another of their locations, this one in the Lodhi Colony market. I met a dear old friend for lunch here. Here’s a quick look at how it went. Continue reading
Dzükou, Eight Years Later (Delhi, December 2024)
My very first Naga meal in Delhi was eaten at Dzükou. That was in January 2016. At the time Dzükou was located in the Hauz Khas market. We loved that meal and resolved to return on our next visit to the city. On our next trip to Delhi, however, we were disappointed to learn that the restaurant had closed. Still later, I got word that they had reopened, not in Hauz Khas but in Vasant Kunj. We had hoped to get there in January 2023 but couldn’t make it work; and in March this year I just forgot about it. I’m happy to report, therefore, that I did make it there on my brief solo trip to Delhi this month and that I enjoyed this meal almost as much as I had the first—the gap arising not from some lower quality at this meal but from the fact that I’ve eaten more Naga and other North Eastern food in the intervening period and as such there was less of the excitement of the new. Continue reading
Zambar (Gurgaon, December 2024)
Another Delhi restaurant report, another thali-based meal. As I noted recently, I use the name “Delhi” a little loosely in my restaurant reports to refer to the NCR or National Capital Region, which includes Gurgaon and Noida, which are not just separate cities but are part of different states (Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, respectively). I bring this up because the meal I am reporting on today was eaten at a restaurant in Gurgaon: at Zambar in the Ambience Mall off of National Highway 48. Even by the gargantuan scale of modern Indian malls, Ambience is particularly massive and alienating. But there were some specific things I needed to shop for and some specific things I was interested in eating and that is how I ended up eating a thali at Zambar. Continue reading
Arunachali Sajolang (Delhi, December 2024)
Okay, let’s get the Delhi reports underway. I was/am in Delhi by myself for this short trip (when this posts, I will be 12 hours from departure) and so the eating out situation was very different from when the missus and the boys are here with me. Thankfully, in India it is very easy for a single diner to eat a well-rounded meal and that’s because our ancestors were wise enough to invent the OG tasting menu: the thali. Almost all my meals out involved thalis. Indeed, even a couple of the meals I ate with other people involved thalis. This lunch, eaten at an Arunachali restaurant in Humayunpur, was one such. I was joined by an old friend who was coincidentally in town from Bombay to speak at a queer lit fest. It was the first Arunachali meal for both of us. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Dosa Point (Menlo Park, June 2024)
Here is the last of my reports from our side-trip to Northern California in June. As you may recall, we drove up to San Francisco from Los Angeles. On the way up we spent two nights on the central coast (I had reports on Mexican meals in Santa Barbara and Morro Bay). After a few days in San Francisco (meal reports here, here, here, here, here and here), we drove down to Menlo Park for a couple of days. We stayed with old, dear friends from my college days in India. We mostly ate at home with the exception of one lunch eaten after a long hike among the redwoods in Wunderlich Park in Woodside. We were hungry and stopped on the way back at a South Indian place a hop, skip and jump from their place: Dosa Point. Here’s a quick report. Continue reading
Godavari, Summer 2024 (Eden Prairie, MN)
It appears that it has been more than a year since I last reported on an Indian or other South Asian restaurant meal in the Twin Cities. And that was a review of lunch at Pizza Karma in Apple Valley—not exactly the kind of thing most people think of when they think of Indian food. What can I say? We don’t go out to eat Indian food in the Twin Cities very much more than we go out to eat Korean food. Given how much I cook at home, it’s just not a priority, even though—as I have noted on many occasions in the past—the Indian food scene in the metro has improved dramatically in the last 5-6 years as more South Indian restaurants have opened to feed the new population of South Indian immigrants in the area. Anyway, let’s address my neglect of my people’s restaurants with a look at a couple of lunches eaten this summer at the place that has topped my previous rankings of Indian/South Asian restaurants in the Twin Cities metro: Godavari. Continue reading
Dosa Grill (North Brunswick, New Jersey)
Alright, let’s get back to New Jersey. As you may recall, I made a quick trip to New Jersey and New York in mid-May. My meals out included three Indian meals and one that was not Indian. This is not a report on the non-Indian one; it’s a report on the last of the three Indian meals (see here for my report on dinner at Bombay Bistro in the West Village, and here for my report on lunch at Pakvaan Desi Spice in Edison). I ate it with a dear old friend and his family (and visiting relatives). The original plan had been to eat at a Pakistani restaurant. However, I was going to be cooking a big Bengali meal for them all that night—with mutton and fish on the menu—and so we decided to keep lunch vegetarian. Accordingly, we ended at a restaurant named Dosa Grill in North Brunswick. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Pakvaan Desi Spice (Edison, New Jersey)
Here is my second restaurant report from my short trip to New Jersey/New York in mid-May. I ate four meals out with friends. Three of these were at Indian restaurants. I’ve already written up dinner at Bombay Bistro in the West Village. That was an old-school North Indian curry house meal. My two other Indian restaurant meals were eaten in New Jersey. Neither were North Indian and both were quite a bit cheaper than the Bombay Bistro dinner. The first of these was lunch at Pakvaan Desi Spice, a Gujarati restaurant in a strip mall in Edison. I met another old friend for lunch there. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Bombay Bistro (New York, May 2024)
I still have five or so reports from Seoul/Busan to come. But before I get to the next of those, here’s the first report from my recent short trip to New Jersey/New York in mid-May. I was there for just a few nights. I had a packed schedule but managed to see friends for meals on each day. The first of those was dinner in New York City a few hours after arrival. I met an old high school friend at an Indian restaurant in the West Village. I had wanted to try one of the city’s better Indian restaurants. We’d originally hoped to eat at Dhamaka but they seemed to be closed for a private event—at any rate not a single table was available all evening. As we batted around options, location and timing became the chief constraints. Which is how we ended up at Bombay Bistro on Cornelia St., a restaurant I’d never previously heard of and he’d never been to, and which, as far as I could tell from their website, was a regulation curry house—a genre of Indian restaurant in the US that I am usually not interested in. Here’s how it went. Continue reading