Sai India Curry also serves dishes from southern India, meaning that there are dishes from the majority of India's compass points. So you'll find a variety of spiced cereals, masala-coated nuts and boxed Indian sweets at the well-stocked take-out counter.
Mr. Patel—or Gopal, as he is known on the label of the line of snacks he stocks at India Market, three doors away—is obviously quite the entrepreneur. He started his modest store seven years ago, and today it has morphed into a thriving enterprise where local members of the Indian community rent the latest Bollywood DVDs, buy 50-pound sacks of Basmati rice or just socialize.
Still, Sai India Curry tends to play it safe. The food isn't as robustly spiced as it might be because Patel wanted his restaurant to appeal to non-Indian visitors. Perhaps that's our news diva's objection. Hey, this stuff is spicy enough for me.
Sai India Curry is simple to a fault, furnished with functional tables and chairs mostly crowded together, plastic water pitchers provided on a side table and little in the way of décor. You'll order from a steam table, or from the menu, which features dishes prepared in a back kitchen.
One of my favorite appetizers is the samosa, a deep-fried pastry pyramid with pea and potato stuffing in the center. Here, it will be served with two types of chutneys, mint and tamarind, piquant and lively sauces capable of waking up the palate. Another starter I like is bhel puri, a street snack from Bombay's Chowpatty Beach. Picture puffed rice, peanuts, sev (crispy noodles made from bean flour) and flat wheat-flour crisps, all mixed with two kinds of chutneys, sweet and sour. It's a little weird the first time, but in the end, the snack becomes strangely addictive.
From Gujurat comes khaman plate, bright yellow, steamed garbanzo cakes that look like squares of cornbread. Masala dosa, a south Indian favorite, can be either a snack or a main dish, and may be the most popular item on the menu here. Two feet long, ultrathin and ultracrisp, a dosa is a fermented-rice and lentil-flour crepe stuffed with curried potato and peas, here minus the cashews most authentic south Indian places use.
Idlis, fermented rice cakes that look like tiny flying saucers, are made in the kitchen and always served with sambar, a tamarind-scented lentil broth, and coconut chutney, a sweet, grainy version, as done here. I'm less fond of the south Indian specialty utthapam, which looks like a potato pancake and tastes like Cream of Wheat gone native. There are also vada, best described as doughnuts with enough chili to blow the roof off of your mouth. Do order a cooling mango lassi, a thick yogurt milkshake, if you plan to take them on.
What you'll get from the steam table is either north Indian or Gujurati, and changes daily. One day there was drumstick curry, whole okra in a rich coconut-cream curry; another day, the featured vegetable dish was a delectable green bean and eggplant blend.
Come for lunch and order a thali, or lunch tray, and you'll get two Indian flatbreads, rice, dal (a lentil gravy), one vegetable curry, pickles and raita, vegetables marinated in yogurt. At dinner, you pay a dollar more and get a second vegetable curry. Pappadum, those crisp lentil flour wafers that almost everyone loves, are $1 extra per order.
Indian desserts tend to be milk-based, and kulfi, ice milk in exotic flavors such as mango, pistachio and chikkoo (a pulpy Indian fruit), are refreshing and delicious. There is usually gajarela, a carrot pudding served warm that tastes a bit like carrot cake.
You'll have to work to spend more than $10 here. Even a news anchor can't argue with that.