| Small indian restaurant with slow service, but large menu of tasty items. |
Reviewer: Jason
Total Reviews: 1012
Reviewed: 6/21/2006
Rating: 7.5
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Today we had lunch with Dominic and he suggested Badal Indian Cuisine in Sunnyvale. We just came off of Kabab and Curry's last week and will be judging harshly. We arrived at the restaurant around noon and the place was not the beehive of activity, there was 1 other person eating. Nice. For a restaurant, it has a weird layout with dancer type mirrors on one side of the wall and a long granite counter with numerous halogen lights in the ceiling. It was probably a dance studio or karate chop shop back in the day.
We grab a table and start skiming the menus. There's a lot of vegetarian items and with South Indian style being served I was quite excited for some spicy dishes. I don't have a menu in front of me but I ordered the lunch special mutton with dahl, plain naan, and samosas.
The waiter bring plates out and too my horror my plate has schwag on it. He takes a look, returns the plate and places another plate. Cool, this plate only has a small turd on it. Why is it the germo-phobe like myself always ends up with stuff like this?? We're off to an excellent start and it triggered off stories of food poisoning, hospital, a visit from Rhea, and other fun stuff. I was already envisioning how my review was to start....2 plates of crap? naaah...too vulgar...what about a tale of 2 dirty plates?
Oh and the service is yet another thing to talk about. You would think these guys were flying food from India directly to my plate. OMG, food takes forever here! After watching the steady stream of people walk in and out with to-go bags, it finally occurred to us the 'SMART' people, call in their orders days in advance to pick up their food. Yeah, I'm exaggerating but it does take a long time for food to appear. Maybe it's a good thing it takes long, they probably cooked everything from scratch.
Dominic's plates were the 1st ones to touchdown on our barren white tablecloth plain. He ordered an ungodly amount of food; grilled mixed meats plate, another plate of vegetables, 2 orders of naan, at just about everything on the table. We had to stop him from eating the tablecloth. I think he ordered more food than Terry and I put together. 1 guy who ate more than Jason and Terry and weighed 1/3 of our weight....we got schooled.
My orders shortly arrived.
samosa - deep fried appetizer. for those who are unfamiliar with them, I cut one in half on picture #8. It's basically a deep fried flour pastry triangular thing. I had a veggie one and it was filled with potatoes, peas, fennel, and other secret spices. An order comes with 2 and costs $3? Definitely good order and recommend trying it.
naan - freshed baked and glistening with oil/flavor. Charred edges and doughie like pizza crust. Excellent and I ate way too much of it. (picture #4)
dahl - it's one of those dishes that will taste different in every Indian restaurant. I've seen it in red, yellow, orange, green, black colors served mild, hot, and South Indian Hot. Today's batch was spicey and rank a tad higher than hot. (picture #7, bottom right bowl) With the right balance of heat and spices, this dahl was excellent. I know it hard to compare dahls but this one smokes the yellow dahl at Shalimar. It puts it to shame...enough said.
mutton - bbaaaaahhh..was in a small bowl. I'm neurotic about eating meats and need to know which part of the body I'm eating. The meat was on small cyclindrical bones in a thick stew. A tad bit gamey but very tender. It was decent. (picture 10)
What did I learn today? Cyclists eat way too much food and Terry and I are considering buying bikes. Find someone who can order Indian food over the phone. Place your orders and drive over there 20 minutes later and eat it there. Lunch can be slow but their food is great. I'm suprised I liked it as much as I did. I would give the food a solid 8 but had to knock it down for the dirty plates and floaters in my water. This place might not be popular with the sit down crowd but there was a ton of Indian foot traffic ordering food to go. Thanks to Dominic for sharing this appetizing lunch.
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Reviewer: Terry
Total Reviews: 738
Reviewed: 6/21/2006
Rating: 8
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Badal was a request from Jatbar fan, Dominic. He accompanied us on the visit as well. Jason and I had never heard of the place, couldn't find any website with menu, or any other reviews online, so had very little information about the place going in. Hmm, this place can't be too good.
We arrive there and the place is empty except for one other guy sitting there. Oh man, this isn't looking good. A man walks up with some menus for us. We scan the menus - lots of good stuff. Its looking promising. He brings over some glasses and plates for us. The plates have some crap on them, and Jasons is especially bad - so he gets another one (with less crap on it). Water is poured into my glass, and there is some particles in there as well. So far, its not doing well in the cleanliness department.
I opt for the Paneer Paratha (flatbread filled with cottage cheese) and one of the lunch specials, the 2 vegetable version. I choose an eggplant and a Paneer specialty of the house (can't remember it offhand right now, but it is the one with the orange sauce).
Then we wait. Wow, these guys are really slow. Which is a good sign, as the food is prepared fresh as you order it. Not pulled from a heated pan. The wait is so long, that I think I would only recommend calling in your order beforehand and (due to the cleanliness of the plates) picking it up to go.
But the food was all VERY good, among the best I have had. Hard to believe, I was really ready to skewer this place after last weeks visit to the excellent Kebab and Curry. Food quality really delivered. I am thinking either an 8.5 or 9 if the place and plates were up to par in cleanliness department.
The naan that came with my order was very tasty, not the best I have had (as it was a little thin for my tastes, compared to the thick pancake like ones at Kebab and Curry) but it was still very buttery and greasy. The eggplant was top notch, not greasy at all, and very flavorful, especially over rice. The highlight though was the paneer orange veggie sauce. AMAZING stuff. I could easily eat an entire dish of just this over rice. Its listed on their menu as a speciality and I can see why. We ordered so much food, and amazingly we finished it all. This was one of my better indian food experiences taking into account only the food.
I wish we had received a menu from this place as there is no way to share the dishes they offer as its not available anywhere else on the web at this time.
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