Premium Sweets & Restaurant

The other place that the grocery guy pointed out to me was almost directly across the street from Mannan Supermarket, Premium Sweets & Restaurant. I can say with confidence right now that I'm going to be a regular here.

While I have yet to try any sweets here (desserts, with a few notable exceptions, are not generally my thing), the regular food offerings all look excellent: there is a long glass counter on the left as you enter with more than a dozen prepared rice dishes and curries, and on the right there is a shorter counter of tandoori and grilled kababs. And if their morog polao is any indication, they really are good - it is sensational.

The obvious drawback with this setup is that everything is made ahead of time, and when you order something, it gets dished up and microwaved. Rice dishes and curries like these don't suffer too much from this treatment, luckily. (Pre-cooked tandoori kababs, on the other hand...)  While Premium Sweet's morog polao is not as refined as Dhaka Garden's version, it is the style that I prefer - everything baked together, so that the all flavors intermingle. There's a delightful surprise in every bite - it may be a sultana or a crisped onion shred, or a dollop of spiced yogurt, adding richness to the well-seasoned rice. Ten bucks buys a generous portion with a whole chicken leg and a hard-boiled egg.

It tastes as if someone's Bangladeshi grandmother might have made it (my highest praise: I LOVE "grandmother" food). Not quite as recommendable is the "spring roll", filled with some deliciously-seasoned minced chicken (they are halal here, after all). If one could manage to get these fresh from the fryer, I'm sure they would be great. But it had been sitting around a while, and the wrapper was rather tough and leathery. Since it only cost one dollar, it wasn't a particularly vexing misfire.

They're open VERY late, maybe even 24 hours (I forgot to ask), and have other locations in Jamaica (Queens) and Parkchester (Bronx).

Premium Sweets & Restaurant
37-14 73rd St., Jackson Heights 11372
718-672-5000
(E, F, M, R, or 7 train to 74th St.-Broadway/Roosevelt Ave.-Jackson Heights, walk a block northwest on Broadway, then right on 73rd St.)
website

Dhaka Garden

Last weekend, I attended a concert at Alice Tully Hall in which two good friends were singing: Elizabeth Blancke-Biggs and Margaret Lattimore, both marvelous singers (go hear them if you can… better yet, come to Mexico City in late June and hang out with us as we all prepare and perform Richard Strauss's opera Salome). As luck would have it, my seat was next to that of an old friend and colleague, the artist manager Alex Fletcher, who very gently tendered a plea for a new blog post. I admit it has been far too long, and fortunately, inspiration presented itself just a few days later.

During a late-night trip to Mannan Halal Grocery, I was chatting with the lovely Bangladeshi fellow ringing up my purchases and happened to mention how much I liked the dish morog polao. He brightened up, ushered me to the door, and pointed down the street to not one, but two places he thought served a good morog polao. He was absolutely right. This evening I brought both my camera and my friend Alex (a mathematics professor, not the artist manager) to Dhaka Garden, where we enjoyed some exceptionally good food.

I had heard that their mughlai paratha was also good, so we started with an order of that. It is easily the best mughlai paratha I have ever tasted – fried with lightest of hands, and filled with subtly-seasoned minced chicken (rather than the usual beef one gets in Indian restaurants) and egg. Well worth the six bucks, and easily sharable by two or three people.

Also reputed to be good was kacchi biryani, so order it we did. It was excellent. The menu says it is made with "premium baby goat", baby goat being a relative term. In Spain, cabrito asado (roast kid goat) is generally no more than 45 days old. This goat was significantly more elderly than that, but had good flavor and was actually tender, in contrast to most of the goat one gets in Indo-Paki restaurants around town. The rice was delicious with complex, fresh flavors.

With biryani and polao dishes, Dhaka Garden offers a small dish of chicken, beef or goat curry for an additional $4.95. How can one pass that up? On our waiter’s recommendation, we got beef. The gravy was rich and complex, concentrated from long simmering until almost reminiscent of Indonesian rending. A recommendation we’re glad we heeded.

The impetus for the visit, morog polao, was indeed excellent. There are several styles of morog polao, apparently, and while theirs is not the style I prefer (I like everything baked together), the quality was so high that it made no difference. My friend Alex, who grew up in India, was particularly impressed by this dish (in fact, he was impressed in general, saying, “This takes me back to my teen years... I haven’t had food like this since I was in India!”). He repeatedly remarked on how fresh the chicken tasted, and indeed the menu boasts "live chicken": you get one half chicken – and a hard-boiled egg – that has been simmered in a seasoned yogurt and cream sauce, with a plate of very subtly-seasoned rice, rich with sultanas, fried onion shreds, and a few saffron threads, served alongside.

This feast set us back about twenty bucks apiece. They also offer a good selection of snacks/appetizers (including some Indian-Chinese items), tandoori kababs, curries (their fish curry is reputed to be excellent), breads, and breakfast items.  Open 9 a.m. - 11 p.m. daily.

(A postscript:  if any Bengali speakers happen to read this and would be willing to assist in the translation of some ingredients and amounts from a cooking video in Bangla, I would be most grateful. E-mail me at the address listed near the top of the page.)

Dhaka Garden
72-23 37th Ave., Jackson Heights 11372
718-424-8600
(E, F, M, R, or 7 train to 74th St.-Broadway/Roosevelt Ave.-Jackson Heights, walk two blocks north on 74th St., then left on 37th Ave.)
website

Tikka Grill

The first time I wandered into Tikka Grill, I immediately spied a fresh chicken tikka kebab on the bottom shelf of the glass case, dripping with yogurt and spices, and I knew I had to have it. It was so delicious, I have been unable to make myself try much of anything else here. It's only serious rival I've found in the NY metro area is at the Fiza Diner.

I can tell you, though, that the onion kulcha is excellent: a layer of tender onions enclosed in light, moist, and crispy bread.

On a busy corner of Astoria Blvd. near LaGuardia airport, this place is, in fact, rather easy to miss. Tucked in the ground floor of an unprepossessing low-rise building, it's almost literally a hole-in-the wall. If you go, you'll be rubbing elbows with a bunch of New York's Pakistani taxi and livery drivers, who are almost always eating curries, not kebabs. I'm sure they're great, too (the taxi drivers always know where to eat) - I just haven't got around to trying them yet.

Tikka Grill
24-02 82nd St., East Elmhurst 11370
718-458-4848
Q33 or Q47 bus from Jackson Heights
menu (add $1 to most of the prices)

Tawa Tandoor

The Indian buffet is, at this point, pretty much a classic restaurant genre. Yet finding a decent one in NYC can be rather tricky. Sure, there's the Jackson Diner for Sunday brunch, but their kitchen has seen better days (and one actually has to get up in time to get out there for brunch...).  Indian Taj, a bit further up the block is okay in a pinch but just isn't all that good. Luckily, a newcomer has arrived to take up the slack: Tawa Tandoor.

Most of the cooking here is Indian food's first cousin, Pakistani, as are the owners. The charming matriarch of the establishment told me that they have cooks there from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, so there are all sorts of influences floating around here. But what makes this place stand out is the quality of its offerings. Everything is prepared with care and attention, with good ingredients, producing flavors are almost always fresh and vibrant - a rare thing for a buffet at this price point. And when that price point is $11.95 a head at dinner, it's practically a steal.

The restaurant is halal (no pork - and I didn't even miss it!), with a good selection of both vegetarian and meat options on the buffet. The spread is pretty much the same every day, with an item or two traded out occasionally. My perhaps-a-bit-too-hurriedly-taken photos don't do the food justice, but it will give you an idea.

From left to right: hakka vegetable noodles, vegetable fried rice, vegetable kofta (delicious "meatballs" made of vegetables), white basmati rice, and palak paneer (spinach and Indian farmer cheese, also known by the less specific, but more common, name saag paneer). The hakka noodles are fun and tasty, the vegetable kofta unexpectedly delicious (at least it was unexpected by me, confirmed carnivore that I am), and the palak paneer has a bit more bite (in a good way) than most versions you'll find.

Continuing the vegetarian offerings:

From left to right: aloo gobi (curried cauliflower and potatoes), poori bread, chana masala (curried chickpeas), and vegetable pakora and samosa. Most of these I have not, in fact tried (there is almost nothing you can do to cauliflower to make it appealing to me, and I prefer to get my starch overloads in ways other than pakora and samosa). But chana masala is an especially dark, rich version of this dish, and puffy, crispy poori bread is always fun - try to catch them just as they're bringing fresh ones from the kitchen.

And, finally, the meat:

From left to right: tandoori chicken, chicken jalfrezi, chicken tikka masala, goat curry, and chicken biryani. Once again, if you can catch the tandoori chicken on its way out from the kitchen, you'll be rewarded with some very moist, flavorful pieces of chicken. There are usually chicken kofta (lovely chicken meatballs in a complex gravy just spicy enough to be interesting) in the chicken jalfrezi spot, but the jalfrezi was in no way a disappointing substitute - chunks of chicken and vegetables simmered in a slightly spicy, yet soothing, curry sauce. The favorite of Americans, chicken tikka masala, has more kick to it - and firmer chunks of chicken - than almost any version I've tried, raising it far above the cloying glop one usually gets. I was told the goat curry is quite popular, and indeed it is some of the best goat I have had in this country.

There are also some salad and dessert items to round out the selection - rice pudding is on offer almost every day - and a fresh naan bread is brought to you almost as soon as you sit down.

Tawa Tandoor
37-56 74th St., Jackson Heights 11372
718-478-2730
(E, F, M, R, or 7 train to 74th St.-Broadway/Roosevelt Ave.-Jackson Heights, then a short block north on 74th St.)
website

Sodesh

In the Norwood neighborhood of the Bronx, there is a relatively new restaurant called Sodesh that says it serves Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani food. Whatever style the food is that they serve, it's absolutely delicious. I'll go with Bangladeshi, since their versions of familiar dishes are stylistically unique in my experience.

Perhaps the term "restaurant" is overstating things just a tad... it was clearly one of those Chinese take-out counters that populate the less-gentrified neighborhoods of New York until quite recently, and has about 5 tables. No matter - the food is stellar.

We started with an assortment of kababs as appetizers:

There is the usual tandoori chicken, chicken tikka, and a seekh-style minced chicken kabab. But the winner was the one at the bottom of the frame, which I think is called chicken tirka (didn't get the name – but one can always just point!). Delicately flavored and moist – it was fabulous.

They serve the most subtly delicious chapli kabab I have ever tried (minced chicken with egg, diced tomato, green pepper, and spices):

Preceding the arrival of the entrées was a plate of rice for each person. I don’t know what is in it, but it is the most beautifully perfumed rice I think I have ever been served anywhere. It complemented particularly well the popular winner of the evening, butter chicken:

Every time I have ordered butter chicken elsewhere, what generally comes out is some sort of variation of chicken tikka masala. Not here. The menu says "boneless chicken, butter, ginger, tomato purée, yogurt, cream, lemon juice & all spices." The tomato purée was surprising to read, because I could not identify any tomato flavor at all.  This is not a bad thing.  All those ingredients are in perfect balance with one another to create a creamy chicken dish that is both light and rich at the same time. It's simply stupendous, and the caramelized onions that garnish almost all the dishes here are a delightful addition.

A seemingly close cousin of the butter chicken, chicken kurma, is, in the end, quite different in overall effect. The sauce is creamy in texture, but its base is ghee, coconut milk, and puréed nuts, which throws the aromatic qualities of the ginger and spices into sharper relief. Depending on ones tastes, this dish is as good or better than the butter chicken.

(And there's that beautiful rice in the background.)

On the menu is a northern take on the south Indian (Goan, actually) dish, vindaloo. I’d never seen beef vindaloo on offer before, so I had to order it (when, oh when is the original PORK vindaloo going to come to NYC?). It was spicy, but not overly so, and pleasantly vinegary, with the de rigueur potatoes. A nice, warming dish.

Goat biryani was aromatic and everything it should be, and the chunks of goat were actually tender

Their saag paneer is the tastiest, most interesting version of this dish I've ever tried. The spinach was perfectly cooked, and the texture of the homemade cheese was just right – it so often gets dry and grainy – and the fresh flavor, even better. The menu doesn’t mention tomato in this dish, and it's the one dish where I thought I could taste it. In any event, the flavor had a lot of dimensions to it – not something I normally associate with saag paneer!

Marvelously inexpensive - the only dishes over ten dollars are the shrimp dishes (and the goat biryani).

Sodesh
3111 Bainbridge Ave., Bronx 10467
718-231-5370
(D train to 205th St., follow the signs for Bainbridge Ave., then half a block down the hill)

Sammy's Halal Food Cart

It seems almost inconceivable to me that anyone interested in the kind of food I'm interested in doesn't already know about Sammy's Halal Food Cart, but for those one or two of you out there, you need this information. You see halal carts that offer grilled chicken and/or lamb over rice (or pita sandwiches) all over the city. This one is absolutely the best I've found, and is the standard by which I measure all other halal carts I try. A few come close, but none are better - there is a reason they won the 2006 Vendy Award.

You'd think this fare would be reasonably simple to prepare, but the number of possible pitfalls is somewhat suprising, all of which Sammy's avoids seemingly effortlessly. The chicken is always juicy, tender and flavorful, and nice-sized chunks that aren't so small that you wonder what, exactly, you're eating. Okay, the lamb is still ground, seasoned, and compressed before grilling (like everywhere else), but it seems to be a notch or two closer, somehow, to the original meat - and therefore, tastier - than all the others. Their rice is never dry or lumpy (surprisingly, I've had some truly lousy rice from halal carts) and the sauces are very good. They have just about the best hot sauce in halal-cart-land, and if you like spicy cilantro sauce, it's there - you just have to know to ask for it.

They're just a few steps from the 74th-Roosevelt-Jackson Heights transportation nexus, and they're open until 3 a.m. At 5 or 6 bucks, I can think of no more satisfying bargain in the late-night (or any-time) snack department.

Sammy's Halal Food Cart
73rd St. & Broadway, Jackson Heights, NY 11372
347-342-7480
website

Lal-Qila Indian Food Palace (MOVED)

I don't know what's going on with Asian food in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but I definitely approve. Poking around the Chowhound boards - always the best source of recommendations when in unfamiliar territory - I found a write-up of a place called Lal-Qila Indian Food Palace that sounded interesting. It was.

"Indian Food Palace" is a bit of a misnomer, as this is definitely a Pakistani restaurant, and, fairly predictably, halal. They do serve several Pakistani versions of dishes usually thought of as Indian, and I ordered one of them. Goat korma was just fantastic, full of complex and robust flavors, and goat meat that was actually tender. It resembled not at all most kormas I've had, which tend to be much lighter in color and creamier. As you can see (hopefully - once again, dim lighting makes decent pictures almost impossible), this wasn't like that.

In the basket is a rumali roti, the perfect delivery medium for korma sauce. Rumali roti means, literally, "handkerchief bread". It's an apt name for a big, thin, floppy flatbread, served folded up, very much like... a handkerchief. Much more fun - and unusual - than naan.

Flavors here are all more complex, more assertive, and generally fresher than those of Pakistani food that I'm accustomed to in New York. I arrived just as they were tearing down their Sunday lunch buffet, and they were kind enough to let me taste a few dishes before they went back to the kitchen. Beef nihari - a long-simmered spicy, complex curry dish originally from Old Delhi, then brought to Karachi after Pakistan's independence - seems to be the house specialty. It's pretty great. There was also a fascinating ground beef dish, also from Karachi, called "seekh fry". It's chock-full of indecipherable (to me, at least), earthy flavors... rather amazing, in its way.

I'm definitely going to get there BEFORE 3 p.m. one Sunday before leaving Texas.

Lal-Qila Indian Food Palace
3044 Old Denton Rd., Carrollton, TX 75007
972-389-0900
website

Fiza Diner

As a Manhattan dweller, I keep hoping to find great, cheap ethnic joints a bit closer to home than, say, Flushing. Instead, I find outrageously good food even farther away. This evening I tasted the most delicious Pakistani I have tried in the course of my wanderings so far in the Glen Oaks/Bellerose/Floral Park section of Queens, a few blocks before it turns into Nassau County, at Fiza Diner.

It's little more than a hole-in-the-wall, and it's definitely no-frills (of the Dera variety): the prepared dishes are on display at the counter, and kebabs are grilled to order in the back. But Michael, Elizabeth and I all literally moaned with pleasure when we tried the chicken tikka kebab--tender, juicy, and expertly spiced. Apparently, we were all in the mood for chicken... in addition to the kebab, we ordered chicken tikka masala (perhaps the most delicious I've had anywhere), chicken korma (korma with a kick--fantastic), and chilli chicken (all those peppers looked more intimidating than they actually were--sweet and delicious), and even a chicken roll as an appetizer (rather like a deep-fried, Indian-spiced spring roll filled with ground chicken--quite tasty). A couple of vegetables did make their way to the table, too: a good chana masala (chickpeas) and Elizabeth assured me--because I DETEST okra--that the bhindi masala was delicious. Purely in the interest of research, of course, we felt compelled to try three of the breads, all of which were fantastic: garlic naan (best I've ever tried), onion naan, and keema naan.

As if the great food weren't enough to make one very happy, it's unbelievably cheap, too. I'll be back, especially since I'm a big fan of bhatura bread (one doesn't find that everywhere) and didn't notice it on the menu until after we had already ridiculously over-ordered!

A second trip with Jose and Jennifer yielded a couple of things (besides a great meal): the information that they only serve bhatura bread for breakfast (dashing any hopes I had of ever trying it), and.... pictures!

Top left to right: salad/garnish, rice, and chicken tikka masala (which identically reproduced the "moan effect" from the first visit--EVERY time any of us took a bite of it), with a spicy lentil dal just below it. Bottom left to right: chicken tikka kebab, naan, and spinach with potatoes.

Naan, dal, and aloo sag (spinach with potatoes):


Kebabs--the stupendous chicken tikka, and the delightful new discovery, chapli (spiced ground meat):


Keema naan and garlic naan:



Fiza Diner
259-07 Hillside Ave., Floral Park 11004
718-347-3100
(F train to 179th St., then the Q43 bus out Hillside Ave.)

Dera

First there was Roti Boti in Astoria, favorite late-night haunt of cab drivers. Then a branch opened in Jackson Heights. Then another Roti Boti opened directly across the street from the second one (owned by a relative of the owner of the RB2, I'm told). Then suddenly both Jackson Heights Roti Botis changed their names. (There were rumors of a lawsuit over the name.) For a few years now, every time a get that craving for Indian (or Indian-like) food, I would head to the original Jackson Heights Roti Boti, now renamed Dera.

The prices are rock-bottom, the atmosphere ain't much, and the cooking is a little inconsistent. But right now it's Ramadan, and this Halal-Pakistani place has a particularly festive feel after sundown. I'm no expert on Pakistani food and can't speak to its authenticity, but there sure are a lot of Pakistani families that obviously enjoy it!

Choose your food from the glass counters at the back--one for the prepared rice and curry dishes, and one for the kebabs, broiled in the tandoori when you order them. The staff will cheerfully answer any questions about the food you may have. My favorite offering here is one of the very simplest, the chicken tikka kebab--always juicy and tender, and just spicy enough to be really interesting. There's almost always a spinach dish on hand, usually with chicken, and it's always great.

Chicken makhni (butter chicken) is always a hit, too:  large chunks of chicken tikka in an ultra-flavorful, yet subtle, sauce. You'll want to be sure to have ordered some bread to sop it up with.

 After that, the "if-it-looks-good-it-probably-is" rule applies. I'm partial to the lamb shanks in curry, goat curry, various chicken keema dishes, beef behari kebab, goat pullao, onion kulcha bread, and garlic naan.

And for dessert, the last glass case contains the sweets of Mr. Shaheen, original occupant and owner of the building, who seems to supply desserts to most of the Indian restaurants in the tri-state area.

Dera
72-09 Broadway, Jackson Heights 11372
718-898-3372
(E, F, G, R, V, or 7 train to 74th St.-Broadway/Roosevelt Ave.-Jackson Heights, then 2 blocks west on Broadway)