I'll have Matty start this one off:

Location: If there’s one criticism of me as reviewer of fine and not-so fine curry houses, its that thus far, I haven’t reviewed any places outside the predominately white (read: honkie) neighborhoods of NW Calgary. So this week we decided to venture into the ethnically diverse northeast, where masala flows out the taps. My pick for a restaurant was The Clay Oven. Unfortunately, I neglected to make reservations and in the end, we were turned away at the door as if we had leprosy. But hey, I guess now we have a reason to call in sick for work on Monday.

So instead we headed further east while Led Zepplin’s Immigrant Song played on the CD player. Okay actually, that’s a lie. Ang made us listen to Journey. But in the end we found a gem of a place…

Located next to Pizza 73 and 7-11, the restaurant typifies "dodgy" It has three booths for eat-in customers. The benches in the booths are hardly large enough to accommodate anyone’s ass, let along a fatty like me. The TV was blaring a Bollywood soap opera when we walked in, which later turned into a program entitled “An eye on the Quran”; a swift reminder of India’s 2nd official religion. In terms of the décor, I give em props for using cheap posters of Rajasthani camel herders and what can only be described as the Kama Sutra’s illustration of foreplay in the desert.

Food: I totally thought we were gonna get Faranged when the friendly attendant taking my order, started explaining in broken English what paneer was. But maybe that’s a good thing if you’re a curry virgin. I was totally blown away by the quality and flavour of my Malai Kofta. In my experience this is a dish that if done well, is tasty; but disappointingly vile if not prepped correctly. In this case, the dish tasted similar to something I had in Agra. Ace!

That being said, the star of the show at this restaurant is the naan. No need to even consider rice cause you’ll only want to use the bread. And while my boycott against Butter Chicken (in light of its various international human rights violations) continues, I did try Ang’s sauce and agreed that she could definitely be excused for eating it. Out of nowhere, a free salad showed up on our table and I confused the Hindi speaking sous-chef when I insisted we didn’t order salad. My friend Jason Howorko probably would have appreciated it. For the lassi fans out there: Sorry no mango lassi is available but the sweet lassi is decent. If you’re some kind of twisted circus freak (ie. You actually are from India) you might try the salty lassi. Personally I don’t understand it.

3 people not seen at the restaurant:

1. Russell Hitchcock (Lead singer of Air Supply)
2. Lt. Moses Hightower (from Police Academy)
3. Goaltending legend Terry Sawchuk
   

Alright then....Ren here. So after Matty's choice for the meal fell through I had to pull out my ace in the hole. I'd noticed the sign for this place just the other day when driving to the Calgary Sweethouse with Chelsea. Tucked in behind a Gas Plus, not to mention the other fine establishments in the stripmall, this place seemed so dodgy that Chels and I took a pass the other day. Well....caught without a eating spot on short notice I was sure glad that I remembered it. And after describing the place to Matt and Ang, I had Matt raring to go, and Ang ready to call for pizza.

The atmosphere was ... interesting.... A row of very highbacked booths with little skinny benches and the typicall sweets display case. There were no English descriptions of the items on the menu but we were offered help to place our order. We probably would have done ok but I know a few people who would have appreciated the aid. After a considerable wait spent watching a wonderful bollywood soap opera, where the lead male character appeared to be reading his lines from the script in his hand our food arrived.

I ordered the Shahi Paneer, and ang got the Butter Chicken. Her butter chicken was tasty. The shahi paneer was great. It came in a sauce very closely related (read: same as) to matts Malai Kofta but with chunks of Paneer (cheese). Its a creamy sauce dish with a tiny bit of spice but lots and lots of interesting flavour. We also recieved some mutter rice with the meals and a couple bowls of naan. Also placed on the table was a salad that we did not understand. Apparently it "comes with the meal". Which is fine....but you don't make friends with salad....you must bribe us with pakoras or samosas. However they did make friends with the food. I was stuffed, but all I wanted was more. After tearing through the original batch of naan, we ordered more which were also quickly devoured.

Ang spent the majority of the meal wondering what the brightly coloured pink balls and shiny pretzel like things were in the sweets display so despite my usual avoidance of all things dessert we ordered a couple of each to go. The pretzel like things are called jalebi and are kinda crisp on the outside and very soft inside and fully saturated with syrup. Very sweet. When asked about the pink balls our server told us they were called chum chum (which they are). When asked what chum chum is, he replied "chum chum is good". Well...actually chum chum is a cakey dough ball type thing that is completely saturated in syrup. I have never really enjoyed indian desserts but these were actually pretty good examples of how things should taste. Ang's reaction to eating both was to gag and proceed to try to spit them out. Honestly my finding has been there are 3 categories of indian desserts.

1. Tastes like sugar soaked in corn syrup.
2. Tastes like burned milk
3. Tastes like burned milk soaked in corn syrup

They are definitely an aquired taste, however they are obviously very popular as every restuarant that i've been to that sells sweets is generally permanently busy weighing them out by the box for people.

Ang's review as told to Ren: these guys have the best butter chicken ever. Its as good as the stuff in england. Nasim's has the worst butterchicken ever. Mmmm...those desserts look good....lemme try one. .... blaaaaaaaaaaaaaH....gag, barf. Ok, how bout this one......bleeeeeeeeeeech....gag, barf. I love normal sweet stuff but these are too sweet for me.

OVERALL RATING We discussed giving the India Restaurant & Sweet House a 9/10 overall, and the food itself would rate that. However the location and atmosphere bring the score down to a 8/10. Will we be back....me and matt probably. Ang will probably get take-out. Would I take my mother there....probably not.
8/10

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