Sucky Friday Night

Given half a chance, I'd have introduced someone to my right fist last Friday evening. Actually I wouldn't have, I'm a man of peace, but my ancestral-warrior-blood sometimes boils over, and yet thankfully, I'm able to control it - beat that Hulk! A few weeks back, I was suffering from conjunctivitis, commonly know here as Madras eye. So a couple of days at home, off from work, actually made me realise that staying at home is boring, and working from home sucks big time. I really don't know why people opt for this option. Maybe it's a psychological thing - I've come to associate home with 'no office work', and so the very thought of doing office work at home sometimes is appalling. In any case, so during the last leg of healing, I decided to take a long walk - so I walked from home (Wilson Garden) all the way to Koramangala, and kept walking into streets and lanes I'd not visited before, until I noticed a restaurant called Momoz...that's right, spelt with a 'z'. For some strange reason, I automatically assumed that this would be a nice Chinese joint that served pork. Anyway, the restaurant was closed (I was there around 6-ish and was on my way back home...walking), and so I decided that this was a place that needed my gluttonous presence sometime soon.

So last Friday, on my way home, I decided to stop by this place and 'check it out'. P was busy, VP was in Malaysia, and at the last minute, I tried calling Manuscrypts, who also turned out to be busy. So it was the good old book and I (once again). This time I happened to have Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, a fantastic book that speaks about the evolution of the English language and the origins of a lot of words.

So I enter Momoz, and the insides look all nice and clean, and again, the thoughts of sinking my teeth into some steamed pork momos and later into roast pork almost made me drool in front of the first waiter who showed me to a table. A worn-out copy of the menu was given to me, I flipped the page open, and in a restaurant called Momoz, you'd have thought they'd at least have substantial types of momos. Aaaaaaaaarrrrgggggghhh! Sacrilege! These blistering barnacles didn't have more than 8 types of momos (4 veg and 4 chicken), and what's worse, no pork! Oh, my stomach sent a strongly worded letter to my brain to henceforth not assume stuff and raise expectations. Excerpts of the letter:

...a brain of your capacity and in your position isn't expected to make such juvenile mistakes... ... ... such actions undermine the effort of the rest of us in trying to give you honest opinions about the meals... ... ... inclined to call you by names and adjectives used for those who break traffic signals...

Well, sometimes you have to take it on the chin and make do with what you have. So ordered a plate of steamed chicken momos, and a plate of roast chili chicken. The momos were decent, not the best I've had, but certainly better than some of the momos we had at the two Tibetan joints near Jyothi Nivas college, Khawa Kar Po and Momo Hut. The dough wasn't stale and chewy and didn't feel rubbery, and the chicken was surprisingly good. OK, to be fair to them, the momos were pretty decent, but I guess my yearning for pork didn't allow me to enjoy them as much. The roast chili chicken though, was more chili, less roast (couldn't make out if it was a batter or a reeeeeaaallly thick marinade, but didn't feel right), and the only thing good about it was that the chicken was still soft and not over-cooked (given my luck that night, one couldn't be sure if I'd end up with a plate of pieces from a bad batch).

Chicken steamed momos

Roasted chili chicken

So after this so-uninspiring meal, I walked out and headed towards a Mama Mia shop to try and hopefully resurrect my spirit that seemed to have all but left me. Just before the Mama Mia shop, I saw Tunday's. "What the hell, why not", I said to myself, and stepped in and ordered a plate of the Tunday's special, which is a gelawati/galouti kabab. While there is some confusion over whether this was the dish made for the toothless nawab or whether it was the shammi kabab, one thing is for certain - this kabab is so soft, a toothless person would have no problem scarfing it down, gumming it down the ol' food pipe. Yummyness I say!

Tunday kabab (Gelawati/Galouti kabab)

Damn, I need to get me one of those sleek cameras that fit into the pocket. Junta, suggestions are welcome. I don't want it to be too expensive (needn't be 10 mega pix, 3 will do nicely, and needs to be <= 8k) - I have a superb SLR and an even better lens. This one would be to replace the camera on my phone, which seems to churn out some baby vomit whenever the light is even remotely dim, case-in-point being the snaps here (and some other posts where lighting in the restaurant was 'romantic', meaning dim, which doesn't suit the needs of the camera on the phone), and the ones in the next review, which will be posted in a couple of days time.

There are a host of reviews to be done, and at the moment I'm having a mini crisis finding time, guests, and scheduling the reviews!

Phoooeee! Hope such nights are aberrations and don't recur. E.V.E.R.