Tucking into an Indian22 Sept 2022

I`m a pure foodie and Indian food was one of my first true gastronomical favorites. As a young hungry boy in Jo-berg back in the late 1970`s, joy was wolfing down a chicken curry bunny-chow on a Sunday after the matinee and trying to balance the act of eating the bowl (which is made of bread) and scarfing down that sweet and spicy curry stew without making a disaster of my sweater. It was love at first taste and it never left me whether I was living in Asia, or London (easy to find) or California and Romania (hard to find). Now back in Bucharest for the last ten years the options are few, but acceptable with some fine tuning at ordering time. A local waiter was the one that gave me this tip; tell the kitchen you want your food in the English rather than the Romanian form and they will translate this as meaning much less sugar and a bit more heat. It does improve the product in my view and the result is something closer to what I`m used to grading as normal.

In terms of Indian restaurants that I can recommend, while there are five sit-down Indian restaurants in Bucharest, I`m only going to put the BUCHAREST HOMES stamp on two at this point in late 2022 and they are:

• Taj (down near the Marriot hotel) and
• Haveli (off Mihai Eminescu Street).

Neither has much in the way of ambiance, but both have friendly and informative staff as well as natives in the kitchens managing the process and ordering the right ingredients!

There is a third option for eats, but only for delivery and this is a mom-and-pop catering business with a tasty but very limited menu (it changes every day) called Sana Indian Kitchen. My Sri Lankan buddy recommended this last place and it`s good enough to make the list. But that`s it! In a city with millions of people there aren`t a lot of options.

Luke Lewis

Bucharest Homes