I’ve decided I’m going to take the lead on this one.  I usually let Matty go first, and then proceed to insult him after it’s too late for him to defend himself, but today, I’ll lead.  I originally heard about Kabob Palace from a co-worker who lives nearby who highly recommended it.  I just figured she was talking about the Istanbul Kebab House that is in the vicinity and filed it under “Silly people confusing Turkish food with Indian food” and probably would have just forgotten about it.  Then I got a menu in my mail box for the Kabob Palace, and realized that it was in fact a separate entity.  Woohoo.  What you can’t tell right away from their menu, is that they are not a separate entity from Amore Pizza and La Pizzeria Napolitana.  All three businesses have different menus and phone numbers, however they are all in one tiny little place with Amore Pizza over the door.  Corporate mergers gone out of control? (ren)

For those of you who read our website with the criticism that our reviews are 90% filler and only 10% curry, this may be your lucky day. From my standpoint, today’s review is all about food. Sure, Ren will probably try and sabotage the review by giving a lecture on Newtonian physics and then somehow try and relate that subject back to butter chicken; but for me, it’s all about the food this week.  This is because Ren volunteered to get take-out and bring it over to my house so we could watch soccer.  Consequently, I have no comments on the physical status of the restaurant, nor did I have any interactions with the curry attendants. Instead, I went to Rona while Ren picked up the curry.  (matt)

Apparently my getting way too far off topic has gotten out of hand when even my own co-writer is mentioning it.  I’m not really sure how Matt thinks I would go about applying Newtonian physics to butter chicken, but I do know that a big steaming bowl of butter chicken will stay at rest or continue at a constant velocity unless acted upon by an external unbalanced net force.  For example, me shoveling it into my mouth with a gigantic oversized novelty spoon.  You could calculate the degree of that force by measuring the mass of butter chicken in my gigantic spoonful, and multiplying it by the rate of acceleration as the tasty morsel speeds towards my mouth.  And of course, as everyone knows, as hard as I try to shovel the butter chicken into my gaping maw, the butter chicken itself is trying just as hard to not get shoveled.  Silly butter chicken. GET IN MY BELLY!!!! (ren)

We had planned on watching the Canada – Jamaica World Cup qualifier on TV because more than one source listed it being shown live on Sportsnet West (Channel 27). However, when I got home from Rona, a Toronto Blue Jays game was being shown instead. Bugger. Does anyone outside of Southern Ontario care about the Jays? Unlikely. They haven’t been relevant since 1993 when they acquired their former nemeses Rickey Henderson and Dave Winfield and won their second of two World Series.  In the end, I had to log onto my computer and get the live stream from Sportsnet’s website.  This was difficult and embarrassing because my connection speed didn’t jive with the feed from the network. Ren suggested I have been downloading too much porn. (matt)

I don’t really know if matty’s argument about the relevance of the Jays really holds water since we’re comparing it to Canadian international soccer.  Honestly, our soccer squad hasn’t been relevant since qualifying for the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico, and proceeding to make a quick exit with a record of 0 and 3 with 0 goals scored and 5 goals scored against.  Our boys did however win the 1904 Olympic gold medal for soccer, in a year when zero South American or European countries participated.  Actually, only 3 teams competed, one Canadian and two American, and the American teams were apparently so horrible that they had to play 3 games (including 2 goalless draws) before one could be awarded the silver.  I guess as far as watching the Canada/Jamaica match, we were just lucky that there was no Extreme Poker, or Extreme Cheerleading Championships, or any Toronto Maple Leafs players taking their families out to dinner to pre-empt the internet feed as well.  (ren)

We finally got around to dishing up the curry and watched the second half of the game while commenting on the curries. Ren had the butter chicken while I had Lamb Korma. They certainly did not lack spice. Very flavourful. My nose was running and Ren’s head turned a festive shade of red from the spice. It looked like he had dosed up on Niacin. The butter chicken seemed tasty and my lamb korma was very authentic. How do I know it was authentic? Because I could identify strategic parts of the sheep’s central nervous system in my curry.  In this case, the spinal cord within non-descript vertebrae. Yum!!! (matt)

Gotta love that brute-force butchery.  We also got some Tuna Kabobs since I figured we ought to at least try the kabobs since the place is named after them.  And I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a tuna kabob before so I went with that.  They have your standard beef and lamb ones too, but seriously….you can tune a piano but you can’t tuna kabob.  My butter chicken was good.  Maybe not the most classic creamy tasting ever.  But it didn’t taste like crappy tomato soup either.  Really spicy with nice chunks in it.  I’m not sure if most of our readers (hi mom!) would really like it since it’s not really like any other place’s butter chicken, but it was a really good dish. (ren)

If I had to guess, a great deal of the heat came from our surprise appetizer, the Tuna Kabob, which basically looked like small hamburgers with chili seeds in them. Who ever thought overfishing could be so tasty? Bravo to chef on this one!! The rice was decent and the naan appeared to double as donair bread. But we really can’t take points off for this. (matt)

We were starting to fear that our supply of good curry places we haven’t visited yet was “over fished”  after a pretty rough summer of poor reviews, but this meal has restored our confidence. Nice one Kabob Palace.          

Score: 8/10  

PS: Canada and Jamaica tied their first match 1-1. We have no chance in hell of qualifying for the tournament in South Africa but if by some miracle we do make it, Ren and I will be there with our jerseys: “Team Canada, FIFA Rank 80 and proud of it.”

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