Bhabhi's Kitchen - a mini review

My wife and I went there this wknd after reading all the good thigs about it here. here are my impressions

---The owner makes a fetish of insisting that he makes everything 'fresh'. Turns out he may be right. The pakoras we ordered came fluffy, hot and crispy and tasted like freshly made and not reheated. The breads and the dishes tasted the same.

-- My wife ordered the Lamb Qorma and was pleasantly surprised by the spicing. It was not the generic sauce that you get in most restaurants on Devon. It was cinnamony as befits good lamb dishes and spicy. I ordered Bagharey Bhindi. It was quite authentic; although I make my sauce with more fennel rather than the cumin used here. But it was the pleasant Hyderabadi dish it is. A good Indian version of the salty-sweet-sour-hot all-in-one version of the SE Asian sauces.

---We ordered a regular paratha, onion naan and a pistachio naan. The paratha was nice and flaky and not dripping of oil/fat as it sometimes can be. But the naans were a disappointment. Looks like the owner has decided to save some labor by using pizza dough; although cooked in a tandoor. Next time in we should order the sorghum or millet bread and avoid this monstrosity. Has this been a recent phenomenon? I am not making this allegation lightly. It was NOT a naan. It looked and tasted like pizza dough.

Other than tha Naans, everything else was as advertised. It was essentially home cooking; if you have a bhabhi that you can visit often! There are dishes here for vegetarians that I was quite pleasantly surprised by. The Sarson-ka-saag (which I will try the next time) and dishes like that are not quite common in restaurants here. So if you go, avoid the naan.


PS: The masala tea was incredible. Very Very tasty.

Thanks for sharing your experience, Indianbadger. Your comments on the interesting spicing of various dishes are particularly valuable to me. Also, I appreciate your caveats on the naan. I will happily try the paratha and millet bread, but, unwarned, would most likely have fallen into my "MUST -HAVE-NAAN" rut. Keep posting!

Indianbadger wrote:The Sarson-ka-saag (which I will try the next time) and dishes like that are not quite common in restaurants here. So if you go, avoid the naan.

IB,

though I can't say my experiences at Bhabi's conform to yours (I found it just average, with the price above average) I would really really suggest that if you want sarson - ka -saag that you go across the street to chopal. In my mom's words "zaberdas!". I know that bhabi's uses primarily rapini rather than sarson for their version which i think gives it too bitter a flavor

zim wrote:

Indianbadger wrote:The Sarson-ka-saag (which I will try the next time) and dishes like that are not quite common in restaurants here. So if you go, avoid the naan.

IB,

though I can't say my experiences at Bhabi's conform to yours (I found it just average, with the price above average) I would really really suggest that if you want sarson - ka -saag that you go across the street to chopal. In my mom's words "zaberdas!". I know that bhabi's uses primarily rapini rather than sarson for their version which i think gives it too bitter a flavor

Definitely true about the sarson-ka-saag IMHO - went with a veggie
friend a few weeks ago, and the owner insisted we have it as it was
"the best in town", as usual It still wasnt as good as Chopal's (but
the reason I didnt go to Chopal instead was that I figured the veggie
choices would be much smaller there).

The prices are definitely high for the area and the kind of restaurant
IMHO - you can get far better food IMHO at Chopal or Usmaniya
or Khan's down the street (though fewer veggie options), and they
are all far cheaper as well.

However the prices arent high in general, just comparatively - one of
my friends from NJ thought they were relatively reasonable. However,
the owner *did* mention that he was thinking of raising the prices
again

Overall its not a bad place to go, if youre with veggies IMHO - it was
about 10pm that day, and I had 2 strict veggies with me. In that
situation there are not many choices - Usmaniya and Chopal are
both cheaper and much much better IMHO, but both have only
about 3 veggie dishes each I think. All the cabbie joints (which
Id rather go to often as well) have *no* veggie options whatsoever.
In those circumstances it wasnt a bad choice, but in general there
at at least 4 or 5 restaurants within a couple hundred yards that
IMHO serve better and cheaper food.

c8w