Kingston Indian Restaurant was the first place we tried. Little Red had never been to an Indian restaurant before, but she claims to like lamb curry, and I wanted a masala dhosa. I rode my bike over from Woodstock, down the Sawkill Road through Zena, and we tried the lunch buffet. It was not bad. Little Red like the lamb curry and the tandoori chicken. It seemed to be the only restaurant in downtwon Kingston that had a good sprinkling of people at the tables -- but that was probably just an illusion. It seemed "a clean, well-lighted place." The wait staff and the owner were friendly. They had only just opened a week or ten days before our first visit. There was no dhosa on the menu. Well -- no matter. Many Indian restaurants do not serve dhosas.
We tried Mountain Gate next. Little Red and I were the only two people in the restaurant when we got there and no one else came in before we left. Possibly Christmas Eve is not the best time to visit an Indian restaurant? The waitress, an American teenager, looked after us fairly well. We liked the creamy chicken and coconut soup. And the papadoms. Mountain Gate does not have a dhosa on the menu. The dining room seemed clean. They charged me what seemed a steep price -- $3.50 -- for a cup of tea made with a Lipton tea bag—not even Brooke Bond Red Label. Little Red and I managed to get enough to eat for around $40.00—tip included. I call this the “Indian restaurant problem”—I think you often pay what seems a lot for what you get at an Indian restaurant. Overall, my opinion is we paid nearly twice as much as the meal might properly have cost — but that's just my opinion. The dining room was a bit chilly.
We tried Mountain Gate next. Little Red and I were the only two people in the restaurant when we got there and no one else came in before we left. Possibly Christmas Eve is not the best time to visit an Indian restaurant? The waitress, an American teenager, looked after us fairly well. We liked the creamy chicken and coconut soup. And the papadoms. Mountain Gate does not have a dhosa on the menu. The dining room seemed clean. They charged me what seemed a steep price -- $3.50 -- for a cup of tea made with a Lipton tea bag—not even Brooke Bond Red Label. Little Red and I managed to get enough to eat for around $40.00—tip included. I call this the “Indian restaurant problem”—I think you often pay what seems a lot for what you get at an Indian restaurant. Overall, my opinion is we paid nearly twice as much as the meal might properly have cost — but that's just my opinion. The dining room was a bit chilly.
Mountain Gate made me miss the old Deanie’s. It seemed a well-appointed tablecloth restaurant, clean and well-lighted, and perhaps on a busier night the kitchen might have pleased me so much I'd be willing to overlook the price.
About aten days later we went down to Tanjore early on New Year's Eve. It was a buffet night. The rice was good. The samosas on the buffet, however, were too soggy to eat and the nan had been steamed until it took on an oddly gelatinous texture. Little Red liked the lamb curry; but I thought it was not only a bit dull but also that it had been stewed a bit too long. We both liked the tandoori chicken wings. I liked the vegetable biryani and the palak paneer; the chicken tikka masala was unexceptional -- did you know it's the new "national dish" of Great Britain? -- and seemed to have been made, if that is possible, with a starting base of canned tomato soup. There were many choices on the buffet, but overall most items seemed to be swimming in a lot of gravy. The chai was not bad, though, and it was included in the price of the buffet, as was dessert. I especially liked the honey balls and the white cheese balls in syrup, but by that point in the evening Little Red was too full of curry to think of eating dessert.
If Tanjore was closer, I might go fairly often, but Rhinebeck seems a bit far, though I might go back for a masala dhosa if I’m in the area on other business. This meal also cost nearly $40.00 for two people (including the tip), but at least we got plenty to eat, and it did seem that Little Red was at least warming up to the different types of Indian food. Perhaps we would have fared better later in the evening, or on a non-holiday night.
At Kingston’s Indian Grill, which is on Broadway near but across the street from the mid-town Diesings, we did fairly well, I thought, though Little Red felt we should have gotten more of lamb curry for dinner. It’s true we did not get much of the curry, but at least it was good. The papadoms at the start were freshly crisped. The samosa chat was a relatively crisp samosa in a bowl of chickpeas with yogurt sauce—and there seemed to be a lot of chickpeas. The alu nan was toasted nice and crispy on the exterior. I forgot to order chutney. A large party sitting nearby got some very nice looking tandoori meats on sizzling platters. There were not many seats in the restaurant. The carpet seemed perhaps even older than the carpet at Eng’s. Possibly a new carpet sweeper would help keep it cleaner. Though I found the lamb curry to be spiced just right, and we both agreed that it tasted good, Little Red felt we did not get much of it (the IRP again), and Little Red complained it was slightly to hot for her. So I ordered a mango lassi. We went home relatively happy, because at least we hadn’t spent an arm and a leg, and we both thought the tandoori grill items might be fun to try in the future. The Indian Grill has a lunch buffet, which made Little Red’s ears prick up, but alas they seem to have taken lamb chops off the new menu.
Overall, none of the curries we ate at any of these restaurants was better than the curried potatoes or lamb curry I can easily make at home using Patak’s Mild Curry Paste — which you can find at Hannaford's.
The Hudson Valley seems ready for a few totally vegetarian restaurants like the Udupi Palace, so I can at least hope some udupi cuisine nearby ... before long.
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