Hello from Ottawa. I arrived here the morning of the 18th. My luggage arrived the evening of the 18th. Thanks westjet/LBP airport. First ottawa curry dish was some chicken tikka masala and patak's Aloo Mattar Sabzi that chelsea whipped up. And she whipped it good. Actually the tikka masala was really good...but if you are a retard in the kitchen and you want a quick, tasty, vegetarian curry...the aloo mattar sabzi is a 10/10. Basically you open the can...pour it into something (your mouth or a heating dish) and then heat it and eat it (or just eat it if you skipped the heat it part). Zesty. Ryan after eating homemade curry = zestier (Chelsea).

Well a couple days later we finally got around to having some takeout curry. Walking down the street we saw a couple dodgy places, even a couple advertising a "student biryani" alongside the usual chicken, beef and lamb dishes. Seemed a little strange but chelsea told me there are lots of students here so maybe they're trying to cull the herd a bit.

Finally settled on "Friends 786". Extremely dodgy on the outside and equally so on the inside. (also they serve "special student biryani" but we steered clear ). Staff was friendly with a pretty good grasp of english. Apparently they have been open for about 8 months. The 'matron' (mom) explained that they have a daily buffet of 4 different entrees with rice, naan, salad etc. for $8. More on that tomorrow. The menu consisted of pictures on the wall with prices written in...a-la every chinese food place in the food court. CLASSY!!! I think my favourite part was the dirty handprints all over the walls. This place makes India Restaurant and Sweet House on Temple look 5-star. The sign advertising free parking in the rear (lol) was cut out of orange construction paper (each letter) and taped to the window. From the back you could see that the letters had been drawn on to the paper with black marker, but then whoever cut them out followed their own, completely different lines. Note also the cute Winnie the Pooh wallpaper below the till.

Once we got our order in we started to wait. They brought us a pitcher of water, which was a nice touch. Clean glasses, too. Took about an hour but we were reminded that they make all their food fresh. Always good. Kinda cheeses me off when they serve me their leftovers from last night. Gave us lots of time to check out the decor. Bathrooms were.....there. Each had a small green plastic watering can on the floor beside the toilet (the can in the ladies, um, can, was partially full of mystery liquid). Not sure why. Not sure I want to know why. There were no living plants in the place. The back had a second seating area for either the family or the pakistani customers. They were watching what sounded like a good movie...but they didn't invite us to join them. Guess they didn't recognize me.

Got the food home. We had butter chicken (of course), palak paneer, daal fry, and chicken haleem. Butter chicken was ok, good tomato taste. Not much cream though and the chicken seemed to be a mix of dark and white meat. Not great...but not horrible. I ate it up like it was going out of style. The one piece of chicken Ryan let me eat was really gristly, but the sauce was nice. Chelsea had the palak paneer, it was pretty good. Pretty good? It was great! Palak paneer is always good, though. Lots of tasty spinachy flavour. These guys fry their paneer goldeny brown so it holds together better and they sure didn't skimp on it. Very nice. I still couldn't eat this as a main course myself but stealing a bit is always fun.

The daal was boring, as all daal is. Actually the first taste was almost flavourless but then it grew to a nice full lentil and mild spice flavour once it had time to work. It was pretty nice actually. The texture was a little odd. Kinda separated into 2 layers with one being somewhat congealed looking. We might be able to blame this on the 1/2 hour walk home so I won't hold it against it. The chicken haleem was very flavourful. Never had it before but it seems to be a combination chicken and lentil dish. A little bit of heat but mostly just good flavour. The recipe I saw online says you basically just throw in a whole chicken which would explain the gristle and bone chunks throughout the otherwise smooth dish. This was a little bizarre and resulted in a fair bit of fishing between my teeth to retrieve undigestible chicken by-products before I swallowed them. Mark was a little chuffed with us for ordering this for 'him' (we ate most of it).

Lastly we ordered some naan with the meal. It was still hot when we got home, magic of tinfoil i guess. Very thick and heavy...brown on the bottom and fluffyish on top. Kinda chewed like a thick pizza crust...but tasted way better.

Overall I'm gonna give Friends 786 a 7.86/10 (what a freaken name....). 2 of the 4 dishes exceeded our expectations, which were maybe a bit low...but hey...the whole meal rang in at under $30. It was about $29 to be as exact as the staff. The butter chicken was merely good, not great, and the haleem chicken would have been good except for the high chance of inhaling a chicken (splintery rib) bone. Come to ottawa, try it out. Honestly, do! Of the now 3 Indian restaurants I've been to (in 2 years of living here) this is the best one for sure (an expert opinion, obviously). I've just been reminded that this is the 'Ryan show,' though, not the Ryan & Chelsea Show, so I'm gone.

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