I had some time off and was visiting my parents when I decided that for completeness sake, I would review Saskatoon’s third and final Indian restaurant. This little take out joint was once located near the corner of Broadway and 8th Street, only a block away from the king of Indian restaurants in Saskatoon, The Taj Mahal. They had recently moved to College Park when their neighbour, 49 Cent Video, who brought in most of their business, went under. I know nothing about business plans but I’m pretty sure that if you are reliant on a place that rents movies for less than the price of postage stamps, you might be in trouble.

Their new location could really mimic any place in northeast Calgary. A good sign for sure. They are located in a strip mall, at the corner of Acadia and 8th Street, next to a cheque cashing store and a barber shop. Sadly, there are no sari shops in the strip mall (and probably none in Saskatoon either). I walked in to find the owner and his friend sitting in undersized brown leather chairs. They didn’t appear to be discussing anything. They were just looking straight ahead like zombies at the erratic wall of Bollywood videos that you can also rent at Taste of India. Bizarre.

When the owner saw me come in, he appeared to come out of his zombie trance and popped up to the take-out desk. He handed me a take-out menu which I perused quickly. Of note, was their web address. “Taste of India dot ws”. WS? What type of off shore operation were these curry zombies running? A brief search reveals that “ws” is the country code for Western Samoa. It can also refer to “World Site” but I chose to believe that somewhere on some small remote Polynesian island was a network of headhunters with a side business of registering website names. They probably also do corporate team building but mostly they are interested in boiling people in large pots.

With this in mind, I decided I would go with a vegetarian dish. While the spicy chole (chick peas) looked interesting, I went with something is little more complex: Aloo Gobhi (Potato Cauliflower). Okay, admittedly it’s not that complex but it does have more than one ingredient. I also ordered some shrimp pakora and naan. The owner told me they had just made some fresh naan, so that was good. The wait would be about 15 minutes. Just enough time for you do to any of the following activities: a) Get an oil change at the 10 minute lube shop across the street b) attend a touching eulogy for someone you don’t know at Acadia Drive Funeral home, also conveniently located across the street c) pull a Brittany Spears and shave off all your hair at Guys and Dolls Hair salon next door.

As tempting as option “b” was I decided to walk to the mall nearby (The Center at Circle and 8th). Long ago, this mall used to be the pride and joy of people living on the east side of Saskatoon. Unfortunately, its starting to look a little dated. Maybe not like Saskatoon’s Market Mall, a bad hangout for kids in grade nine and senior citizens unable to walk more than a block, but still reeking of its bad early 1990’s renovations. I walked thru the food court and saw on the TVs that Ryan Smyth had been traded from Edmonton for a bag of pucks. I was suddenly nauseous.

I picked up my food and drove home in a state of shock. I’m not sure if the food was bad or if there is a relationship between shock and taste buds, but I didn’t enjoy one portion of my meal. The Aloo Gobhi was very oily and unflavourful. Plus, I have my suspicions that they used sweet potato rather than regular potato because the dish was a yam colored orange. The shrimp pakora were alright although I had to put the shrimp balls under a scanning electron microscope to find any shrimp. They probably used brine shrimp from those sea monkey kits. (Ren had a sea monkey kit once. I think it was a starter pet before they began collecting cats and dogs). Although the naan was fresh as promised, I think they forgot to cook it in the tandoor. Seeing as my parents had sold their tandoor to a U of S student under the false premise that it was not in fact a tandoor, but actually a one person hot tub, I was forced to eat uncooked dough.

I threw out most of my meal. It was horrible. Provided you’re still technically alive, the lowest Glasgow Coma Scale score you can get on exam in the emergency room is 3/15. Therefore, Taste of India gets a 3. I wish the owners well, maybe they’ll get some residual business from the MoneyMart next door. I certainly won’t be eating there again.