Pan

Jackson Diner in Jackson Heights, Queens, NY has been mentioned in a bunch of threads but has never exactly had its own thread. What are we going to do about that? It's the best Indian restaurant I've eaten in so far in the 5 boroughs of New York.

Guru on E. 6 St., New York, NY.

It occurs to me that I never posted about the fact that I took Guru out of my rotation several months ago. The last meal that I had there upset my stomach as much as meals I've had in the more prototypical 6th-St. restaurants. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that (more fat being used? off day?), but each time I visit Madras Cafe, I find that it has continued to be just as good as ever, so Madras Cafe remains my local South Indian standby.

Lissome: I understand the restaurant was packed by the time you got the bill, but if I had been in your place (and this has happened to me before), I would have insisted on speaking with my waiter and, failing that, called over any other waitperson or other staff member who might have been able to get my waiter's attention. Unlike you, I would have assumed that the fish wasn't removed from the bill simply due to an oversight, but under no circumstances short of threats of violence or some other extreme irrationality would I have agreed to pay for a dish that the waiter volunteered to remove and give a substitute for. Had the waiter insisted and had it been effectively impossible to go over his head under those circumstances, I would have given him no tip at all, but I really don't think that would have been the outcome.

How did you notice it. Please let us in on the story.

Suvir: Two things: (1) I don't share a perception that Indian restaurants are particularly dirty. Sure, some of the really cheap places are kind of shabby, but that is much less true of the $15-20/person dinner places I've been to in New York. (2) There is a Jewish community in India today, though it's small. This website shows it to be about 6,000 (though I wonder whether some of their other figures, e.g. of the Jewish population of Russia, might not be significantly too low). Most of them are in Bombay nowadays. The ancient Jewish community in Cochin is practically gone, as they dispersed to Israel, Bombay, Britain, etc.

I think that, of the best meals I had in India, one was Indian and one was probably Afghan. The clearly Indian one was breakfast at Madras Woodlands in Delhi. It was a series of different nans and chapattis with 20 or so different sauces, each distinctive, and each wonderful! The restaurant was in some fancy hotel (for whatever that's worth), and the service was impeccable. I had a fabulous meal at the Khyber Pass, in another part of Delhi. The most memorable dish was an extremely flavorful, perfectly cooked leg of goat. The masala it was cooked with was a kaleidoscopic burst of flavors, or whatever other similar turn of phrase you want to use. I also had a memorable meal in Srinagar at a restaurant up a rickety flight of stairs from the central square that served Kashmiri wedding banquet food. The combination of delicious dishes that were exotic even for someone who had eaten a lot of Indian food and the view of the people with colorful outfits and, in some cases, orange hair in the square below was worth much more than the cost of the food. But I really can't remember the dishes. I also think that the meal my parents and I had at an Indian restaurant in Akasaka, Tokyo deserves mention. The main things I remember are the carrot halwa, which I believe was better than any I've had since, and the fact that we pigged out. The place was fancy and not cheap, but it was worth it. All these meals took place in 1977, except for the one in Tokyo, which was in 1975, so that's why I don't remember everything!

I agree on both counts. Why, we've just scratched the surface with Chinese regional cuisines. Where can you find Yunnan-style food, for example? Kansu cuisine, anyone? Well, my experience with pricey Chinese restaurants in New York to date gives me pause. Shun Lee West went from decent but overpriced to mediocre for a cheap Chinese restaurant (in terms of food), Shun Lee Palace was bad the last time I went (and will ever go, presumably), and even Canton, in Chinatown, deteriorated and is now closed. I can't comment on Vongerichten's new Chinese (or Chinese-ish?) restaurant, but so far, it's my impression that if you want good upscale Chinese, you're best off going to Flushing, where the clientele is mostly Chinese. Yes, I know: The ethnicity of the clientele doesn't guarantee anything. But it can help. It's been years, but I used to go to a Cantonese banquet place off the LIE called Golden Pond or Silver Pond or something like that. We were paying well over $20/person there (sometimes $30/person or more, especially if we got lobster) back in the late 80s and early 90s. The food was truly great there, and we were among the few non-Chinese there. I'm aware that there have been and are upscale Indian restaurants, but I haven't been to them. I do know that there are wealthy Indian-Americans, and if restaurants cater to their taste, I would probably like them! That's the key: Appeal to a core Indian clientele and also a non-Indian one. That core clientele - because it's more knowledgeable - stands a much better chance of preventing the cuisine from deteriorating to the lowest common denominator. It's certainly not wrong to hope for. I would point out that, at least in my view, upscale Chinese restaurants have done very little to promote authentic - let alone unusual regional - Chinese cuisine to the public - not least because "the public" doesn't eat in such expensive restaurants! Instead, it was places like Empire Szechuan and Hunan Balcony that moved the public past just a steady diet of American-Chinese and Cantonese foods like Chop Suey, Chow Mein, Egg Rolls, Sweet and Sour Pork, Egg Foo Young, and so forth. Your hope has to be to attract that wealthy clientele of Indian-American and expatriate Indian professionals and businesspeople, in my opinion. I'll bring up another cuisine: Korean. There are many rich Koreans, but how "mainstream" are upscale Korean restaurants?

T. Brooks: What is a "sally," in the sense you're using the word?

Suvir: I can add remarks only in my capacity as a diner and lover of Indian food, as I have no connection with the restaurant industry. I think that an Indian restaurant that has a very knowledgeable and well-rounded chef and that can feature specials from different regions on a week-by-week or month-by-month basis (even within the general confines of north and south) on a longterm rotation could do a lot to educate the dining public about these differences and all the wonderful non-Mughal (etc.) dishes that they've never tasted before. I also think that the time may be ripe for types of regional Indian restaurants not yet seen (or little seen) in New York, if indeed in the U.S., such as a restaurant that is avowedly Gujarati or Keralese, for example. If we look at the example of Chinese food, many of us remember when virtually nothing but Cantonese food was available. That changed with the vogue in fake Sichuan and Hunan food starting in the 1970s, and that vogue for the fake but no longer typically Cantonese stuff created enough of a change in consciousness to bring with it a willingness to try Shanghainese and Taiwanese food, and indeed more authentic Sichuan-style food, when it finally became available. My feeling is that, for the most part, authenticity is inversely proportionate to the distance from areas where x-ethnic group is concentrated. There are exceptions, such as authentic French cuisine in areas with few French people, but also Grand Sichuan on 50 St. and 9 Av. But I'll tell you where I think restaurants along the lines I'm discussing might clean up: near E. 6th St.; in Curry Hill; and in the West Village. Why? Because people go to those areas for Indian food already, so these new places will stand out from among the crowd, just as places like Banjara and Haveli have, to some degree. In a place like the Upper West Side, I'm afraid that standards for Indian food are so debased that it would be more challenging to find patrons knowledgeable enough to try a place along these lines, unless they do so because it's so fancy that it's high status - sorry if I offend anyone, but I grew up on the Upper West Side and my parents still live there, for whatever that's worth. As for "fine dining," are you really talking about food? I think that primarily has to do with white tablecloths, good service, fancy decor, and perhaps real silverware, and except for good service, I don't care much about the rest - in fact, they'd probably price out many lovers of genuine Indian cuisine. But so be it. We already go to the Jackson Diner and so forth, and we all know there are a lot of Manhattanites who simply won't go to Queens for more authentic food.

You are saying what you'd do: Do you own a restaurant yourself, or are you just imagining what you'd do if you did? For the record, I have never been involved in any restaurant except as a patron, but my position is as follows: The restaurant can choose to promote goodwill by either comping the dish or comping dessert or something, but as I see it, since you chose for whatever reason to eat the dish, it does not have to. You eat it, you buy it.

?? You aren't thinking of this, are you? Terrace In the Sky 400 W 119th St, New York, NY 10027 (212) 666-9490 (212) 666-3471 (fax) It's much closer to Morningside than Riverside, though. I have a sort of vague notion that there's some eatery by the Marina, though. Is that right?

Suvir: When I go to Indian restaurants, I seldom ask for off-menu dishes, but whenever I suspect my food might be bland otherwise, I do make very clear that I want the food to be very spicy. Mediocre restaurants that just don't believe a non-Indian can eat hot peppers don't listen and get a remark of sad resignation from me and a request for hot sauce (which the wait staff thinks will make everything OK, and it won't), but good restaurants normally accomodate my request, and I often find that the wait staff is delighted to have a customer who can appreciate spicy food. My best story in this regard was a wonderful dinner I had at a restaurant at the Quality Inn in Harrisburg, run by Patels like so many other hotels and motels in the U.S. To be fair, the restaurant wasn't crushingly busy when I was there, but my dishes were spiced like the owner likes to eat them (as he told me), and man, were they great! Their buffet lunch the next day, naturally, wasn't as special, though it was still satisfying. I wish all the hotels I stayed at on the road had such good restaurants attached to them.

Yes, Louisa, I got ice cream from that place often, though it was kind of pricey. Sure it's better than Berthillon: It's really Italian gelato. Never forget that whether we call it Nice or Nizza, it's really culturally in many ways more Italian than French. It's interesting to visit the graveyard in the Carthusian monastery in Cimiez and look at the last names on the headstones. Until some time in the 19th century, they were largely Italian, IIRC. My deduction is that those same families Frenchified the names when that area of the Costa Azzura was given to France in exchange for French recognition of Italian control over Rome minus the Vatican. But the whole Provencale area, anyway, has a cuisine which is to a large extent based on the normal Italian grouping of onions, garlic, tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil and red wine. I think their language is more similar to Italian than French, too, and I've heard that it's essentially the same as Ligurian (though I couldn't say anything about that from personal experience).

Bux: Big eating halls in Malaysia had the carts, too, but the small places didn't. The size of the place is a major factor, or at least it can be. I like the carts because they're fun, much like jackal10 explained, and despite the problems that have been mentioned. For the record, I order fried shrimp/chives dumplings whenever I have the chance, and I've usually gotten them hot.

Why? Are you saying that there's no such thing as Shanghainese dim sum?

I have different levels of action, depending on the degree of problem, the price point, and several other things. If I'm in a moderate-to-high-end place and anything tastes significantly off, I send it back. If I'm in a lower-end place, I may tolerate slightly old fish or shrimp while making a mental note about it, and will send it back only if it's really bad, though if I'm asked "is everything OK," I will definitely pipe up. But I will complain about things sometimes when I don't expect any money back. I ordered delivery of some roast chicken noodle soup from a local Chinese place (Mee on 1st Av. and 13th St. in Manhattan) and found that the spinach in it was rotten and inedible that time, so I called to complain and haven't patronized the restaurant since. My brother tends to let restaurants know why he won't be coming back, for whatever good that does. Example: Years ago, he and I went to Mingala, a local Burmese place that had been solidly good up till then. We sent back our food and it came back still tasting like bad Chinese food instead of what we were accustomed to, so he asked whether there was a new chef. Yes, there was. So, knowing that we wouldn't get good food that evening, we ate what we had but he informed the man running the front of the house why we wouldn't be coming back.

You ate it, you bought it, no? If for whatever reason you choose not to return the dish, you must expect to be charged for it. Although if you're not entirely satisfied you should voice your displeasure to the manager, who must then try to make amends by either offering a round of digestifs or dessert or cheese or whatever. Am I wrong? I agree. If you eat a dish, expect to pay for it. There is no reason the restaurant shouldn't charge you.

Remember, Suvir, I live in the East Village of Manhattan. They sell vegetables at Dowel, and sure, I could ask them.

It's not those ridged green things, eh?

It's been a while since I had brunch at Miracle Grill, but I've enjoyed it, and it's a nice little outdoor space.

Very funny writing, Chef/Writer Spencer!

I go from time to time for noodles (tempura soba, for example) to a local place in my neighborhood, the East Village of Manhattan, which is chock-full of Japanese places (mostly specializing in sushi and sashimi, which I seldom eat). I'd say I have Japanese food once every 3 weeks or so. I seldom cook but my father used to make nice Japanese broiled food (fish, eggplant slices, etc. - sorry I can't give you Japanese names for the dishes, but I hung out with a Japanese girl one summer who said my father's Japanese food tasted just like it did at home, for whatever that's worth [if it was just being polite, it was a good act ]).

Thou dost protest too much. Cooking at the high level you are doing it is certainly an art, just as performing a musical instrument can be an art, but both cooking and performing a musical instrument can be mere crafts in the hands of people who are relatively lacking in imagination, creativity, and inspiration and just go through the motions efficiently. No, I don't remember going to Fennochio, though I might have. I was in Nice in the summers of 1992 and 1993 on a student's budget. I don't know if Fennochio was there then (Vieux Nice?), nor how much it would have charged. I typically paid no more than some 75-80 FF - maybe 90 - for pricier meals in Nice. I can't remember what my per diem for food was on my grant ($30?), but I basically lived within it fairly effortlessly by having boulangerie food for breakfast, a plate of pasta for 40 FF or so for lunch and, if I were really hungry, a menu at Cafe de la Fontaine in the Place Ste. Reparata for 69 FF. My classy splurge/date dinner place in summer '92 served cuisine a la Reunion and cost me about 70-90-something FF, I think. I paid more for food in Paris.

No. I seldom cook nowadays, but I have made Indian food to satisfactory results from good cookbooks (Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks, Coleman Marks' Regional Indian Cooking, et al.). Yes. Masala Dosas, because there's a good South Indian place near me that makes good Masala Dosas. The answer to your primary question is I eat Indian food on average at least once a week and often two or three times a week. I sometimes go by a little corner store/taxi stand on 2nd Av. and 2nd St. in Manhattan called Pak-Punjab and get a Chatli Kebab or some such to go.