After a recent trip to this strip mall to eat at Han Dynasty, I noticed this place on the way in. I immediately put it on my future "to try" list. This week was the week to try it.
Now, I'm going to judge two different visits. My first visit was a solo visit for lunch. That visit was simple. I chose two dishes I happen to love, which are Samosa Chaat and Gobi Manchurian, with a Mango Lassi of course. They all pleased me very much. But, what struck me the most is while I was looking at the menu, not only did I see a bunch of items I wanted to try in the future, I also saw some items that the wife would go crazy for.
You see, being that she was born in Mumbai, and since I have visited Mumbai with her, I have come to know a little bit about the legendary Mumbai street food. So I recognized a few items that I know she doesn't get very much around here, and I knew I'd have to bring her here. So, after telling her about my find (after she gave me the requisite guilt trip about eating Indian food without her which I'm used to by now), she determined that we would go there for dinner tonight.
So, tonight the wife and I ordered up several more dishes to try. To satisfy her Mumbai street food cravings, Vada Pav and Dahi Batata Puri were ordered, as well as a Masala Dosa (my wife seems to be on the search for the perfect dosa lately which I have happily joined her for), and for my meat cravings, I gave the Chicken 65 and the Chicken Biryani a try.
Of all of these dishes, I loved the Chicken 65 and the dosa the most. Chicken 65 is apparently a popular South Indian bar snack fried and marinated in 65 spices (take that, Colonel Sanders). Consider it the "boneless buffalo wing" of India. It's wonderful to say the least. The dosa might be my favorite thus far in the area. Good subtle crisp to it.
Meanwhile, the wife was going crazy for the Vada Pav and Puri. My samplings of the dishes found them to be pretty darn tasty as well. The Puri is a flavor explosion in the mouth. I won't describe it, just experience it yourself.
If there was any dish that damn near killed me with the spice, it was the biryani. I tasted a very strong clove taste at first (which I'm still burping up as I write this), and as I ate more of it, the spice hit me like a delayed reaction. In fact, I'm fairly certain the power of the spice temporarily made me disoriented to the point that I almost spilled a cup of water on me as I drank it. Damn, the food made me lose motor skills briefly. Now, this is not to say it was bad. Far from it. It just crossed my personal threshold of spice, which is better than it used to be but not as high as others. And, judging by the amount of Indian people who were eating here, and how many of them I saw ordering biryani while I was there, I have to think that this dish is tailored more to the hardcore Indian palate, which is fine. Me, I'll just order it more mild next time if I can.
Oh by the way, we took some of the desserts home. We have a pound of Indian cookies which we haven't sampled yet (but looked awesome). However, we did sample the Gulab Jamun when we came home. And it's quite possible that we just found the BEST DAMN Gulab Jamun in the area. In fact, I think my wife is still doing a Bollywood dance in her head over it. If you know nothing of Gulab Jamun, I implore you to try it from here. You will thank me later.
A very solid 4 stars from me. My wife would probably find a way to give it 6 stars if she could. In fact, I think she's already calling her relatives in this area to meet her here. And I think she wants to move to Exton now.
Thanks, Indian Hut, for potentially increasing my future mortgage payment. read more