Restaurant review: Bengal Cafe, 2263 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge

[xela]

I was so looking forward to trying this place. My favorite Indian restaurant in the world is Bengal Cuisine, in London, so when I noticed Bengal Cafe's sign in the ever-changing restaurant block on Mass Ave, the name alone prompted me to grab a takeout menu and make a mental note to try them next time I was in the mood for Indian. Which was tonight. So I called them and ordered Chicken Korma: an old standby, a simple dish that every Indian restaurant I've ever ordered it from has pulled off acceptably. Until tonight.

I arrived home to find three small pieces of chicken in a bland, watery brown sauce. Three pieces that turned out to still be on the bone. Something I have never encountered in Chicken Korma in any of the dozen or so places I've had it. Being an American, I expect chunks-of-meat-in-sauce to be served boneless. But I'm also aware that's not the way the rest of the world necessarily works. I decided it they hadn't figured out how to cater to American tastes yet, and that the flip side of that might well turn out to be some really special flavors. So I boned the chicken, put it back on the sauce, and sat down to eat it. And found myself with a mouthful of rubbery chicken which, while generally flavorless, also tasted a little off.

If I had been eating at the restaurant, I would have sent it back — something I have only ever done before when served the wrong thing, and usually not even then. As it was, I was pretty sure they'd be closed by the time I got there if I went back, so I just threw it out, cooked myself something boring and distinctly not Indian, and wrote this.

Comments

[pwaa.livejournal.com]

If you hear good things from other people about it, it's probably worth trying once more, not on a Sunday. Sundays often have issues because (a) they're trying to get rid of anything leftover from the week, and (b) it's the main chef's day off.

But thanks for the warning!

[motodraconis.livejournal.com]

Arf! Well the East End of London is packed full of quality restaurants, sourcing good curry in pretty much any part of London is easy. The larger the Indo-Asian community, the better your chances. London, Bradford, Leicester, Manchester and Oxford are all good places to eat. Also, because the white population will have been "trained up" through better exposure to the quality end of spicy food, the restaurants will serve a better and spicier range.
Liverpool has no such large community, Indian Restaurants are scarcer and I've found the food to be disappointing and bland, even a medium or hot curry having no real flavour to it. I suspect it's because the restaurants in Liverpool deliberately cook their food down to cater for white scallies and scousers who find a dash of pepper on chips "too unbearably hot." A couple of weeks ago I ate out in Leicester and I was practically weeping at the table at how good the food was.

Sounds like a combo of problems here, if Indian restaurants are thin on the ground in your neck of the woods, the food is likely to have been deliberately cooked extra bland (and probably without much joy.)
The bone thing sounds like catering inexperience. Traditionally meat is cooked on the bone. When I was wee restaurants still cooked it that way - trad style, and when I've eaten at Indian weddings the food has been on the bone. Bonelessness, like Tikka massala, is summat that's been developed for the western restaurant palate.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

The Boston area is about as good as it gets for ethnic food in the US, and Indian is probably second only to Italian for sheer number of restaurants here. The place from last night is less than a mile from my house; of the dozen or so restaurants I can think of off the top of my head that are that close or closer, three are Indian and two (an Afgan place and an amazing Tibetan hole-in-the-wall) are related cuisines.

[siderea]

Chicken-on-the-bone was why you didn't like the Marharaja, right?

I went to the Bengal Cafe for the first time a week of so ago, for lunch, and it was duly fabulous -- if you're ok with eating around bones. It was saltier than typical indian, but otherwise pretty normal tasty indian food. The lunch special comes with Neighborhood-level heroic portions, too. Main dish, side veggie dish (a meal in itself), rice, and two adorable fist-sized poori.

Meanwhile, have you tried either Punjab in Arlington or Kashish in Belmont? I was introduced to both by snarkyman, and they're particularly tasty, though pricy.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

> Chicken-on-the-bone was why you didn't like the Marharaja, right?

Bones in a chicken dish that was described on the menu as boneless is how Maharaja annoyed me.