Lena and I like food, and good food even more, and enjoy going out and trying different things. But we are busy, and don’t get to go out nearly as often as we would like. Plus, these days, we almost always do everything with Sankin, and it is still a little challenging to take him out to a restaurant. But tonight we had to go to an Indian place in the heart of Harvard Square, because we had an expiring Groupon which I purchased some time ago.
We’ve been to The Maharaja before and liked it. This evening it was just the two of us, with a reservation for 7:30 pm. I hadn’t initially thought to make a reservation, that was Lena’s idea, which worked out really well, since the place was absolutely packed, with a sizable crowd of people waiting for a table. Somehow, both of us either have really bad memory, or we just don’t visit ethnic restaurants often enough, but neither of us could ever remember what dishes we had previously, and what we liked and didn’t like. I often thought I should keep receipts with the list of dishes we tried, digitize them, or make some notes… but that has never materialized. When I was paying for our meal a thought crossed my mind that here’s my chance to grab the receipt for posterity… and then I didn’t!
Anyway, the menu is online and I thought I’d document what we had and what we thought about it. Finally! Our Groupon cost $29 and included one appetizer, two main course dishes, and one desert. The waiter immediately brought those extra thin crunchy things, for lack of a better word, slightly spicy but very tasty, typical in most Indian restaurants… I wish I knew what they are actually called. Three separate sauces came as well. Plus, once we spotted a leechy martini on the drinks menu, we ordered that in a heartbeat (most places do not have leechy martini, but we had a really good one a long time ago, perhaps at that same place, and since then always keep an eye out for these). The martini was tasty, though we now think there was absolutely no alcohol in it…
Our appetizer of choice was Jeera Scallops. Earlier in the evening, as we walked around Harvard Square, we saw people having dinner at the various restaurants, and someone was eating juicy and tasty looking scallops. Of course, I started complaining that I have not had scallops in a long time. Thus our appetizer choice became obvious the moment we looked at the menu at the Maharaja. Jeera Scallops represented an interesting way to serve scallops, one I don’t believe I tried before. Scallops were cut into small pieces, flavored with cumin seeds, and served on a bed of creamy saffron sauce. They were good, but something was missing, they seemed too plain. Lena started adding some of the sauces, in particular mint and plum sauces, and that made scallops better. I parroted her approach.
For the main course, Lena selected Grilled Pomfret and, I bet, if asked right now, she would not be able to tell you the name of that fish. The description on the menu states that you would be enjoying “a mouthwatering Indian delicacy grilled to perfection”. In reality the fish was somewhat burnt on one side, and prepared clearly way before it reached our table. Towards the end of our meal, a couple at an adjacent table received a similar looking dish, which was literally sizzling, with steam/smoke bolting to the ceiling. Ours didn’t. Our dish was OK overall, eatable, but I doubt Lena would be swayed by the enticing advertisement of that offering in the menu next time.
I went with the lamb. I was a bit reluctant at first, knowing that Lena does not eat it, but she convinced me that I should absolutely go for it, and she would give it a try as well. She said the same thing every other time I considered lamb, and she did try it every other time, and she never liked it and never could eat it. Well, tonight might be different. Selecting from a variety of lamb dishes without really knowing the differences between them isn’t easy. Lamb Shahi Korma was my final choice, probably because the sauce it came with contained ginger, garlic, almond and cashew paste, and that sounded good. The lamb dish was quite good, and, due to the heavy creamy flavorful sauce, you could not really taste the real lamb flavor which is what typically turns Lena away from eating lamb. She had some and kind of liked it. This is a dish to keep in mind for next time.
Oh, almost forgot. We also ordered Peshawari Naan, my favorite (I guess I do remember things that I truly like, don’t I!). This is a sweet flat bread stuffed with raisins, almonds, cashews, and coconut. In reality, I think there was coconut only, but it was still tasty.
At the end of the meal, we were full, and could not finish everything. We took the desert, owed to us due to the Groupon, home, selecting an almond cake. Once we were back in Newton, we fed some of the leftover Basmati rice and lamb and sauce to Sankin, and the little Klop seemed to enjoy it! Nice! And then all of us had hot tea with the almond cake. Sankin got a little piece too, equal sharing among all of us.
We ought to get out more, and try different eateries. And we should try to document these outings. Should be fun.