This is the Indian-Chinese fusion restaurant on Castro. I went there today with Giri Rao, a visiting engineer from Google. The menu at Temptations has many items, including Indian, Chinese, and Indian/Chinese fusion dishes. Giri and I were also an Indian-Chinese lunch duo, but we had an Indian appetizer (Gobi Manchurian) and each ordered Indian entrees. I got my usual butter chicken, which I use merely as a naan delivery mechanism. The clientele at the restaurant consists predictably of Chinese people, Indian people, and a smattering of white people.The food was decent, and I especially enjoyed the appetizer. Gobi Manchurian is apparently deep-fried cauliflower, which is great. Next time I go I shall try one of the Chinese or fusion dishes.
Hey Yishan!
ReplyDeleteGobi Manchurian is not, as far as I know, an authentic Indian dish (I could be wrong). We have it here too in India , but that doesn't automatically make it an Indian one. Also, it's probably "exported", as in, copied (not actually exported physically), from here to the US. My guess is that it is a made-up dish created by Indian restaurant owners, some of who keep trying to come out with supposedly cool or fashionable _names_ for dishes (and give more importance to that than to the tastes, ingredients or quality of the dishes themselves), to get more business. This opinion is based on plenty of real life experience of eating out at restaurants, here, and observing things while doing so, by:
Yours truly,
Vasudev Ram :-)
P.S. But I like this blog series by you and Niniane, and am going to read all of it. I'm a foodie too :-)
ReplyDelete- Vasudev
Also, just to make it clear, I didn't mean that Gobi Manchurian is not a good or tasty dish - just that it may not be authentically Indian - but even such a statement is debatable, if you really go deep into things :) E.g. what if you go centuries back? what is "Indian" or not? And similarly for any other country, for that matter. Haven't tried it myself, and generally have never liked the taste of cauliflower (which is what Gobi means in Hindi), but surpisingly (to me, that is :), I've recently started liking cauliflower a bit more ...
ReplyDelete- Vasudev
What does "naan delivery mechanism" mean? It would make more sense if you used naan as a butter-chicken delivery mechanism, since it is holding the butter chicken. Naan can be eaten without butter chicken, so I don't understand why it needs a delivery mechanism. Wouldn't your hand be the naan delivery mechanism?
ReplyDeleteThe part about being an "Indian-Chinese duo" made me laugh.
The naan is literally delivering the butter chicken, true, but the point is not eating the butter chicken; it is just one of many sauce-based accompaniments necessary to eat naan, which is the main thing I am trying to eat.
ReplyDeleteGobi Manchurian ==> Gobi: Indian for Cauliflower, manchurian: from manchuria. So there you go, Indo-Chinese fusion food :-)
ReplyDeleteOh cool. I am glad that we ate some fusion food then!
ReplyDelete