The "New" 101gas.com

Yesterday I headed to the new location of King Palace (aka 101gas.com), It's on Davenport/Church where they meet close to the Cdn. Tire on Yonge, on the south side of Church, and the gas station has been replaced by a car wash.



Everything else however is exactly the same, right down to the big screen TV on the right of the counter and the microwaves stacked up like Marshall amps. The sterile decor, the neon in the windows and the bewildering array of dishes - all the same. The number of combos offered is perhaps only rivalled by the number of hindu gods.

No matter what you order though, it hits the microwave; so sometimes your food might not be hot enough or evenly warmed up. The exception is the naan, which arrives crisp and fresh and is amazing for a fast food style place.

In the foreground you see chili chicken and aloo gobi on rice and in the background meatballs and saag paneer.



It's all decent, but this will probably not be the best Indian-style food you've ever had, but is miles better than a low end Indian takeout. The main upshot of this place is being able to eyeball a big selection of dishes before you order something up. A big advantage because Indian menu descriptions tend not to be illuminating.

It's open late and the new shop is pretty to get to from my place, so it will probably feature prominently in the rotation over the next few months.

Everest Buffet

Everest on Bloor near Brunswick is a pretty good Indian buffet for $8.95.



You get fresh naan, and the butter chicken has a nice tangy, juicy taste. The other dishes are pretty decent too, esp. the veg. meals. The items are not that different from other typical Indian buffets, but the execution is really good a Everest, and easily better than Nataraj across the street (which is only a buck cheaper).

Indian Wedding Food

Saturday i went to an Indian wedding. Like most Indian weddings the food is Indian buffet food, but this one was pretty good.

It had some western style salads, chicken salad, olives, beets -- kinda like the Spanish buffet and Indian food for the main dishes. It was all pretty good but not that different than 101gas.com, though some used more expensive ingredient. Like this grilled chicken breast in some kinda sauce. Asscheap Indian restaurants would never have something like that in a buffet.

In the pic it all looks like ass, cos it's all mixed up and half-eaten, but it was good.

Ghandi Roti

Last Sunday I was strolling around Queen W before noon when I saw Ghandi, which NOW claims has the best roti in town. Unfortunately, they weren't open yet so I had to carry around a roti craving for the rest of the week. Finally, today I managed to go there again, this time during their working hours. I ordered a lamb roti (no goat), medium spicy, for $8 including tax. In addition to lamb, they also have vegetarian (potato, spinach, cauliflower, chickpeas, etc..., as well as some with paneer), shrimp, and 5 types of chicken roti: chicken, chicken jalfrizi, chicken tikka masala, butter chicken, and chicken korma. But I had to have the lamb in order to compare with the roti at Roti Palace (lamb and goat are the same word in chinese).

The roti itself was HUGE - they serve it in metallic takeout containers which are about the size that you get for takeout lasagna at pizza places, and the roti filled the container. Definitely enough for lunch, and maybe too much if you're not starving. There's clearly a difference between the Indian roti here and at Roti Palace, which is Caribbean-style. The roti bread is not like the chewy, moist bread at RP - it's more like a really thin naan in texture and taste. The lamb curry had definite Indian spice to it with cardamom and cinnamon notes, and it was kind of acidic from what tasted like some tomato (I could be completely wrong here - it's just a best guess). There were some large hunks of lamb fat along with the meat and potatoes, but no bones. The medium hot version was probably spicy enough for me. I could probably take the hot but I don't think I'd enjoy it.

So would I go again? Definitely, if I'm in the area. I'd like to try one of the vegetarian rotis, particularly one with cheese (paneer), and it's a nice, non-pretentious place on the Queen W strip. But it took something like 10 minutes for them to cook up my roti, which was made more painful than it should have been because they had a dude drilling holes into their display case the whole time. And I think I like the style of the roti at RP better, but Ghandi is pretty good for a change of pace.

King Palace / 101gas.com

I got another chance to hit up King Palace aka. 101gas.com, at the corner of Richmond and Sherbourne. They list a million "combos" which are not organized in any way to be useful.


But the way to order is from the steam table -- which is like a 31 flavours for Indian food.



So I just ordered what I did the last time. I had an order of meat (boneless beef something this time) and a vegetable (spinach and chickpeas) on their usual multicoloured rice.

New York Subway

Yesterday we went to New York Subway, a confused little place on Queen W, bit east of Bathurst. This place serves up burritos filled with non-traditional stuff like curried cauliflower. I had a "jumbo satay chicken burrito" which was grilled marinated chicken with lettuce and tomato wrapped up in a tortilla shell - $5.49 plus tax. The chicken sauce was spicy and kind of sour, almost like spicy ketchup but more spicy than ketchup. They also squirted on some weird caesar salad-tasting sauce. Despite the weirdness, the burrito was actually pretty tasty, although at the bottom, where all the sauces had pooled together, it kind of tasted like the "tomato" sauce on the pork chops at the House of Gourmet.

They have other jumbo burritos that are "grilled" for about a buck more - don't ask me what the difference is between the grilled ones and the satay ones. The normal size tortillas are about $3.50 each but I don't know how much smaller those are either. The jumbo burrito I had was enough for lunch but not huge. From looking at Now's cheap eats page I see that they have "California Rolls" which add cheese (and maybe more?) to the burrito.

Anyway, this place was weird but pretty tasty. I guess if I'm in the mood to walk all the way down to Queen, I might check it out again.

Indian Snack

A couple weeks ago I went to an Indian reception. They had a meal, which was ho-hum, but before that they had snacks/appetizers which were pretty good.



Pretty self-explanatory.

Update: I found out that the flatbread is commonly called a "puri", it's similar to a sopapilla, just a flour dough that is flattened and deep fried:

Lahore Tikka House (updated)

I've been by LTH many times, it was easily the coolest or funkiest lookin' place on the Little India strip (Greenwood & Gerrard), since the parking lot is decorated with lights and the outdoor patio used to be lined with shiny silk. When the chance to go there tonight came up -- I was all over it.

Right now it's being renovated, it'll be huge when it's done.

From the outside it looks like nothing right now. The (temporary) entrance is tiny and totally unassuming, just chipboard and two-by-fours:



Inside, it's HOPPIN'. It FEELS like *INDIA*, bright walls, x-mas lights and loud Bollywood music and more than a hint of sweat. For the full effect you need to listen to *THIS* (1.4mb mp3) while looking at these pictures. This is where you order, right at the front counter inside the door, when you place your order you get a holder with a number which you put on your table. Somehow it's coordinated so that your order is tied to this number and then the waiter with your food has to find you. This sounds like a chaotic system because it is.

Indians like to cultivate chaos, and Lahore Tikka Hut does this successfully. The temporary digs is basically a maze of portables connected with halls and passageways. It's packed with shouting waiters who are shoving you out of the way to get around and yelling orders and numbers to each other. This "dining area" is situated in the spot between two portables.

If you walk to the can you go through a passageway which splits the kitchen, so the grills are on one side and the tandoori ovens are on the other. A dude actually invited me in to eyeball the tandoor, but I didn't grab a picture since it was more packed than a New Delhi communter train.





We ordered chicken biryani (lower), a kekbab dish (upper) and I had a kebab wrap and extra naan. The biryani was pretty good -- satisfying. Despite lookin like turds on rice the kebab stuff was very tasty. The meat in the wrap was okay but what made it was the nice fresh, fluffy and toasted naan (not pictured). Next time I think I'll spring for the curry type dishes and naan. Overall the dished were pretty good and better than your typical Indian. The selection was a bit limited, but in fairness this is only supposed to be a Tikka (aka Barbecue) House.

There a line out the door and to the street by the time we were leaving; and as a bonus you get to go home smelling like a spice rack....Good times !





PS. I updated this posting to include a scan of the menu:

Recipe: Curry Noodle

This is a pretty simple dish I whip up now and then. You just need:

Onions
Chicken (boneless pieces)
Soy Sauce
Ramen Noodle
Vegetables
Curry (paste or powder)
Hoisin Sauce (optional)
Chilies (optional)



I sautee up the onions, then add the chicken. Here I just sliced up two chicken breasts and I put in a bit'o soy sauce.



The other spices I'm using are Hoisin sauce (why not?), Thai chili stuff and Trin-EE-Dad curry powder.







This gets added along with some frozen peas and corn. At the same time I'm boiling up the noodles from three packs or Ramen.





When the noodles are cooked spoon them into the curry mixture. The bit of water that gets carried in with it contributes to the sauce. And there you have it :