It's getting more and more difficult for matty and I to get together for a new curry place.  We've mentioned a couple times that our list is thinning out a bit, but this adventure really proved how bad it's gotten.  (ren)

Amidst the Great Depression it was said that people did what they could to scrounge up money and/or food.  I’m sure the odd hungry man stabbed his neighbor over a few extra potatoes. While not developed for a few years after the Great Depression, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was probably quite evident in retrospect. After all, who needs “respect from and for others” when the basics of homeostasis are in peril? (matt)

You may be saying WTF!!???!!! right now....but I promise he's going somewhere with this. (ren)

Ren and I are facing a similar dilemma: We don’t always write respectful things on our website or blog because we are facing “a Curry Recession”. Soon to be a Great Curry Depression. We will soon run out of curry joints to review in Calgary. We will have to become creative in our on-going quest for masala. We will need to explore all potential leads, no matter how obscure or how much they are deemed to be long shots. We will need to stab our neighbors and steal their curry.(matt)

We always have our list of places to see, so we picked a couple in the same general direction, starting from my house, and we planned a route through them.  I remember those exciting days back when we were starting out, when the entire city was open to us and we could confidently head out with only 1 place on our list, and have a great review....no more. We don't get a lot of first tries lately.  (ren)

In light of this, on a Tuesday night in November, Ren and I drove towards an address on Center Street to a place called The Imperial Palace. Convention told us, given the address and name, that it was likely a Chinese restaurant. Hope however, told us that Imperialism was an “ism” perfected by the British Empire, in which they culturally raped and pillaged dozens of countries around the world, including a 400 year reign in India. (By this same theory, we also surmised that New Dynasty Restaurant must be a restaurant owned by former members of the 2001 thru 2004e New England Patriots and specialized in Clam Chowder.)  Alas convention won out over hope and had to venture on in search of curry. (matt)

I've always found it interesting that Chinese restaurants seem to focus on the pre-1912 Imperial/dynastic age of Chinese  history when coming up with names/decor.  Why not more Communist/Mao themed places?  I've seen Great Wall of China restaurants, but I've never seen a Great Leap Forward restaurant.  I guess preventing invasion by Mongol hordes is cooler than causing mass starvation.  You be the judge. (ren)

Next stop was Kahawa Café. This sounded exotic. But as we soon found out, not everything that is exotic, is a curry.  For example, according to the ultimate “unbiased” source of information (Wikipedia), an Exotic sphere ”is a differentiable manifold that is homeomorphic to the standard Euclidean n-sphere, but not diffeomorphic”. Actually, in truth, for all I know, this might actually be the mathematical description for a korma, but I have no way to prove or disprove it. Regardless, Kahawa Café turned out to be a soup, sandwich and coffee business. (matt)

Kahawa was a treat to get to.  Right downtown, I ended up illegally stopping across the street from it while matty got out of the car and jay-walked across to check it out.  Unfortunately, despite our lawbreaking we were not rewarded with a curry.  I guess crime really doesn't pay.  (ren)

Soon later, we were off to check out a place called “Palace of Eats”. They do have Palaces in India and they most definitely have “Eats”. How could this not be a curry house?  It turned out to be a diner specializing in viande fumee. (matt)

That's smoked meat for most of our readers.  While we were checking it out we saw a dodgy neighbourhood grocery that looked like it had potential as well, but it ended up being greek.  (ren)

Our last lead of the night was a place called Imaan. Their address occupied our list twice. Once under the name “Imaan” and once under the name “Bollimog and Sahib Restaurant”. How could 2 places occupy the same address? We concluded that “3218 -17th Ave SW” had to be at the intersection of two cosmos. (matt)

Matty seems to have already forgotten Kabob Palace, Amore Pizza and Pizzaria Neapolitan, which as discussed in our review are all under one roof.  (ren)

When we arrived, we only found Imaan. Located next to the Buttom’s Up Sports Pub, Imaan advertized itself as an East African restaurant. Fantastic. We walked in to find 4 or 5 tables scattered about on a nice hardwood floor. At a corner table sat two “distinctly African” guys. For a minute, I was concerned that Ren’s GPS had failed and redirected us to Lakeside Packers in Brooks, Alberta.  As we waited to be greeted by a staff member, we perused a makeshift classified ad located at the front counter. If anyone reading this is looking for a roommate, call the restaurant at (403) 242-1650. (matt)

When we saw that they advertised themselves as serving east african cuisine we didn't worry at all, because we've been to a couple african restaurants, and they all seem to do some crossover Indian food as well.  Delice Cafe, Nasim's, Safari Grill and Samosa Grill all come to mind as doing both.  As it turns out, Imaan only does african.  Whoops.  (ren)

After being greeted, we were directed to sit at any table and handed menus. We didn’t recognize anything really. We had our suspicions that the sambosas might be an African version of samosas, so we got some. They were served with a very hot and spicy paste. Fans of Tiffin’s turpentine chutney might enjoy this topping but we found it a little too hot. The beef sambosas themselves were decent with a little thicker crust than most samosas we’ve eaten. I can’t decide if this made them taste pre-manufactured or not. (matt)

Sambosas are really just like samosas.  I think I had them, also called sambosas, at an Afghani restaurant once.  The main difference between the samosas and sambosas I've had is the letter “B”. I would make a joke that the “B” stands for “Bargain”....but they're pretty much the same price as anywhere else.  It seems like nearly every culture has it's own version of the “stuff, wrapped in pastry” food item.  There's obviously the samosa/sambosa in india through africa.  There's the perogy in the ukraine, the wonton in china,  the meat pie in the british isles, and the pizza pop in north america.  (ren)

With Ren’s mucosal epithelium damaged from the spice, we needed something to quench our palates. Ren ordered a Mango Shake while he made me ask for item #42 on the menu. I am not adverse to eating or drinking local delicacies. When in Scotland, I had no problem ordering the Haggis. When in Argentina, I ate the Asado-prepared black pudding and sweetbreads. In France, I might have tried tripe. But when Ren demanded that I order a glass of Camel’s milk, I had to work up more than a little courage. As luck would have it, they were “out of camel’s milk” and I was saved from a certain misadventure in pasteurization. Instead we shared a pitcher of Mango Shake, which was more of a Mango Nectar. (matt)

Not only were they out of camel's milk, but our server admitted that it's not actually real camel's milk.  Apparently they take regular milk and add some type of camel flavour to it to give it the distinctive flavour.  Matty and I both imagined a 3rd bottle sitting on their shelf beside the Chocolate and strawberry Quik, and were thoroughly weirded out. I'm also pretty sure the mango shake was just mango nectar as we saw the guy grab a 1 litre bottle from the cooler before disappearing into the back, then reappearing with a pitcher of mango something-or-other.  It may not have been what we were looking for, but it was successful in putting out the fire from the sambosa sauce. (ren)

Not recognizing the items on the menu made ordering a main entrée difficult. As such we decided on the sampler platter for 2. This was a good choice. Although we can’t remember the proper names, it came with the East Africanized versions of Tandoori Chicken, Chicken and Beef Tikka as well as some tasty Goat chops. All of this was served over spaghetti and rice with raisins. Very odd. There was also a salad with a tangy Thousand Islands-like dressing. It was all very tasty and filled both of us up. We decided that the sampler platter is a dish that almost anyone could find something to enjoy since there was just so much variety on the plate. (matt)

The rice wasn't too far off from an indian biryani, and like matty mentioned, the meats were not unlike tandoori.  The goat chops were a pleasant suprise.  I wasn't too into the salad, but that's just me.  The Somali spaghetti was pretty tasty.  It had just enough sauce to give it some flavour, but didn't block out the flavour of the other items in the platter.  In the hopes that my burning mouth was caused by the sambosas themselves rather than the sauce, I tried some more of the sauce with my rice.  I immediately regretted it. Luckily matty could only stomach 1 glass of mango nectar, leaving me pretty much the entire pitcher to myself. (ren)

Of all the East African places we’ve visited, this one seemed to have the most foot traffic, with many takeout orders being picked up during our meal. We even saw the proprietor negotiating a catering deal at one point. I must say, I probably prefer Delice Café and Nasim’s but Imaan did a respectful job filling our curry void. There’s certainly no lack of spice or flavour. So much so, that when I returned home, my girlfriend complained that I reeked of onions. Classic! (matt)

We give it a strong and forceful 7/10.

Not at the Restaurant:

1. Maria Zavala (Recruitment Officer, Lakeside Packers)
2. Pat Patriot (Mascot for the New England Patriots)
3. Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed (President of Somalia)

Rating: