India House

So apparently all I crave these days is Indian food! We tried a new place this week that is a little closer to the house. Here's the review!

India House Restaurant
765 53rd Ave. NE
Fridley, MN 55421

We went here today and sampled many items off of their buffet lunch. Because this is not a vegetarian restaurant, there were more choices to sample here. Overall, the food here was very good and the prices were quite reasonable. Its only $9.99 to have tho whole deal, and that is great when you consider that comprises appetizers, entrees, and desserts!

I tried the:
Vegetable samosa These were really good! Theirs are a little different in that the inside is many small cubes of potato rather than the mashed potato filling that most Indian restaurants use. Quite good with the tamarind sauce.

Chicken Makhani This is chunks of chicken cooked in a tomato cream sauce with spices. It was quite good, but more subtle in flavor. I added a bit of raita to punch up the flavor. I really liked the sauce on this!

Vegetable Curry This was also quite good with raita. One of my favorite things about Indian food is that it can take a simple dish of vegetables and make it extremely flavorful and filling! This definitely fit the bill and I enjoyed it with some basmati rice.

Paneer with vegetables I like Paneer. Its really good and this was no exception. Its got a mild cheesy flavor and then it takes on the spices of the sauce and the vegetables it was mixed with, mostly red onion in this case. Couple this with a little creamy raita and life is quite good.

Curried goat I tried a small piece of this and I have to say that I did not like it. The meat was very tough and hard to chew, like dried out roast beef. I am not sure if it was poorly made or I just don't like goat. But that's my opinion.

Finally Pat and I got small portions of three different desserts and tried them:

Kheer (rice pudding) This was creamy and good with a subtle pistachio flavor. However, the other spices in this version were very subtle. It was overall a milder version of this than I have had other places, but still good.

Mango Pudding This was good! It sort of tasted like vanilla pudding with mango juice mixed in. It also had pieces of fresh mango mixed in, but they were not very sweet. However, on a hot summer day, this was quite refershing.

Rasmalai This was the most intriguing of the desserts we tried. It was a chunk of homemade cheese in a sweetened and thickened milk sauce. It was good, but I spent most of the time trying to identify what the texture reminds me of. It takes a little effort to cut into the hunk of cheese with a spoon, and to take the first chew in your mouth. Then the cheese just crumbles on your tongue. The milk sauce is very nice, and the cheese itself has very little flavor. After some thinking, it occurred to me that it reminded me of the divinity that my grandfather used to make before he died in terms of texture. This is a very interesting and different dessert that I recommend everyone try!

Overall, our experience at this restaurant was very positive. The food was good, the service was polite and attentive without being obnoxious, and we enjoyed ourselves very much.