Gorging On Atmosphere: Junoon

I've been inundated with restaurant recommendation requests recently. Whether for my sister's visit to London or a friend's mother's to New York, it seems I have become some what of a human restaurant guide. To be honest, I enjoy handing them out, so its really not a complaint as much as an observation.  In fact, the very point of starting this blog was to share my restaurant experiences with the aim of people trying them out. However, even before the origin of this blog, I was always asked about Indian restaurant recommendations by colleagues and friends alike. While this poses no problem when it comes to London, which has some of my favorite Indian restaurants of all time, they are few and far between in New York. Most Indian restaurants here dollop oodles of cream on practically everything on the menu and seem overly reliant on the popularity of their chicken tikka masala. So anytime a new Indian restaurant opens in New York, I am eager to try it to see if it will break the mold and actually represent the art of good Indian cooking to this city. My uncle had pointed me to an article about the recently opened Junoon, and when RC wanted to get us all out to celebrate our win in the recent Cricket World Cup, it seemed like an ideal location.

Sambar By The Bay: Dosa

There are a number of times that I have asked and been asked the question - "If there was only one type of food you could eat for the rest of your life, what would it be?" Invariably, I have only one answer to that - South Indian, and more specifically, dosa. It is far and away my favourite food. The crisp rice-lentil pancake accompanied by a steaming hot bowl of sambar, potato masala and chutney just make for a perfect, well balanced meal. It is my first meal in the morning each time I go home and the only dish I can really eat multiple sittings in a row! There was a time back in college that any trip to New York would always involve a first stop at Pongal, which at the time was the only place in the city you could get a decent dosa. Times have changed since then and the arrival of Saravanaa Bhavan and Tiffinwallah have made Pongal an afterthought for dosa in New York. However, as I have discovered on some of my recent trips there, the Bay Area has developed its own contender in the imaginatively named Dosa.