Anjappar @ Jurong Point

We went to Anjappar for dinner yesterday with Jian's folks as I didn't feel like eating at home. We have been wanting to try Anjappar for a while now, but have never gotten our arses to it. I did make Jian buy a masala thosai & mango lassi for me once though. I somehow preferred the one from Prata Wala (yes, the website is a COMPLETE LETDOWN) downstairs & the mango lassi was sweet beyond belief (yes I preferred Prata Wala's mango lassi too).

Jian's parents actually did say that the food at Anjappar wasn't that great, but it's always good to try for yourself, as different folks, different strokes.

Anyhow, we ordered:

Chettinad Chicken Masala. Not bad.

Chicken Lolly Pop. Jian HAD to have it, as he was surfing the menu & trying to find out what the items were & I noticed he kept lingering on some lollypop chicken videos. This was the best dish we had, even though it was deep fried. The skin was nice & crisp & had a nice tanginess to it because of the lime we squeezed onto it. Mine was gone in a flash.


Mixed Vegetable Curry. There was more curry than vegetables in it. Luckily, the curry was passably nice & I ended up eating most of this, anyway.


Mutton Sukka Varuval. Don't be fooled by the size of the picture. This is a close-up shot. In fact, they all are. The plate is equivelant to a teacup saucer. This was not too bad. Quite nice. We ordered 2 portions of this as it was a SUPER small serving.


Fish Curry. I did not eat the fish as I didn't feel like it, but I tried a little of the curry. Very fishy, but Jian's parents thought this was the best dish of the lot.


Biriyani Rice. I didn't try this as well as generally speaking, I don't fancy the musky taste of biryani rice. Jian & I shared a white rice. What I like about the rice that they serve in indian restaurants is the texture. The grains are fluffy & yet, they separate easily. Jian says it's because they boil the rice instead of steaming it. Don't ask me. I just eat it.


Soupy thing that comes with the rice, Jian's ma says it's made from assam.

Jian finished off his meal wth a masala tea. I've had masala tea before & I don't remember the taste of the masala to be so strong. It seemed to overpower the tea. I remember liking my masala teas from any stall in Little India, in fact. Oh well.

In conclusion, I think this was by far the least memorable indian meal we've had EVER. Perhaps we have spoilt ourselves by patronising too many stalls in Little India (Sakunthala's, Sri Kamala Vilas, Jaggi's & basically almost anywhere you go, the food is good) & Samy's Curry at Dempsey.

There were plenty of indians dining at Anjappar, so I guess the food must be up to par. Well, it is; it's just not as fabulous as I had hoped. We also noticed that dishes were delivered to the restaurant pre-prepared & they just put the finishing touches before serving. Makes sense, then all the branches have a standardised taste, the food comes to us hungry diners faster & they take up less space in the already teeny-tiny kitchen.

The bill came up to $65.42 (including GST) for 4, including a masala tea, a lime juice & a sweet lassi.

Eat Until Sweat & Burst

After reading several forum discussions and food blogs talking about this Thosai restaurant, I decided to bring Sumdumful to eat at Sri Kamala Vilas Restaurant, because she was an Indian woman in her previous life. Sri Kamala Vilas isn't really a restaurant, it really looks just like a coffeeshop. But even though it may look very small from the entrance, there's really ample seating at the back.


My Masala Thosai was good. I think there are usually 3 types of condiments served with thosai. My favorite is the thick orange one you can see in the picture. I think it's called Sambar (not sure). Some places like Sakunthala's at Dunlop St. (another famous thosai place), don't serve sambar though. The thosai was filled with a generous amount of masala curried potato. I should have cut it open to reveal the potato inside.


Sumdumful had Masala Rava. Note the size of the Rava compared to her body! In case you don't know what Rava is, it is very much like thosai, except that it is crispy, has lots of holes in it, and a bit oilier - probably fried. The rava here comes embedded with flavourful sliced green chillies and fragrant curry leaves. Very Delicious. It was served the same way as my Masala Thosai.


And we shared the Masala Chicken! :P~~~
Very fiery and delicious. I must go back and eat soon. The masala chicken was very hot and spicy. And the serving was huge too. I thought the server had intentionally given us a large order so they could charge more, but this plate was only an unbelievable $3. The chilli-red chicken came with lots of thick gravy which we ate with our thosai. There were lots of onions, curry leaves, star anise, and other indian spices in the gravy.

The servings here were so huge that even though we only ordered the 3 items above, I couldn't finish my food, which is unusual for me. The food, especially the masala chicken, was also very hot. So, we ate until we were SWEATING & BURSTING! We also ordered lime juice which went beautifully with the food and helped douse some of the tongue fire.

The final bill for 2 of us, including 2 cups of lime juice, turned out to be about $9.20 only. I'm coming back for more.

Sri Kamala Vilas Restaurant (not Komala Vilas)
Block 662, Buffalo Road (Tekka Market)#01-16
Beside the POSB ATMs

Erratum
Just found out - Sambar is actually the vegetarian curry.
The orange and white coloured pastes are tomato and coconut chutneys respectively

Maharaja Delivery Service

13 September 2006 - Ordered from Maharaja Delivery Service

TANDOORI PLATTER 2 PCS Each
BUTTER CHICKEN
LAMB VINDALOO
GOA FISH CURRY
PANEER SAAG - spinach with cottage cheese
ALOO JEERA - Potatoes in cumin with fresh coriander leaves
BINDI NIANTARA - Lady's fingers in onions, tomatos and other spices
GARLIC NAAN
PILLAU RICE

Found it a bit pricy but what more can you ask for if it is a delivery service ... was totally like lazy and we all agreed the menu looked really delicious especially when you're about to faint from starvation.

The vindaloo was spicy, the paneer saag, they didn't fry the cottage cheese and the spinach kind of was too mushed up, looked more like a spinach paste. The portions were pretty small also but all the sauces, rice and naan was pretty filling.

Will let Satellite and Lynx take care of the rest of this review.
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LYNX'S Review:

Today we had the leftovers for lunch. Apparently, take-out curry, unlike home cooked curry, does not taste better over night. But in general maharaja makes decent curry.

What's refreshing was the Lady's Fingers, it wasn't mushy nor slimy and acts as a great antidote for burning overspiced tongues.

The Goa Fish Curry had fresh and plump fish slices in it and was mild but not boring. If you're expecting the tangy-ness from traditional fish head curry, well you'll only find a slight reminder of it in this northern dish which focused more on the basil.

The Butter Chicken Curry/Dish was very interesting in that it was buttery but you wouldn't know it was butter. Creamy yet not gelat, a very mild curry. Its not a spicy dish at all but certainly had a decent array of spices in it.

The fire-cracker of the lot was the Lamb Vindaloo. Like its name suggests, fire-breathing spicy-ness but not toungue-numbing so you could really still taste all the spices that went in. Lamb pieces were just tender enough.

The Tandoori Platter was a disappointment. Meats were not succulent enough although you could truly taste the char from the ovens.

The cottage cheese pinach dish aka Paneer Saag, was the weakest link. Tastless, spiceless, just tough cubes of cheese dumped into green muck.

The potato dish was a nice medley of spices, onions and carbs. This dish makes eating carbs almost sinless. The spices and onions neutralizes what would have been a rather gelat dish.

All in all the oily but flavourful naan went great with the curries and side dishes. Only thing was the price. Not that it was expensive but for this level of culinary expertise i would not be expecting this price.

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SATELLITE'S Review:

lynx pretty much summed it all up about maharaja's. i would give thumbs up for their nosh EXCEPT for the spinach with cottage cheese which is very bland and BORING. it was left pretty much untouched by us all. and oh, their chicken tikka too was a bleah....

my favs are the butter chicken and the mutton vindaloo. the butter chicken, has a nice piquant taste unlike others i've tried before elsewhere. mutton vindaloo was tangy and intense.

the chicken tikka, which was marinated pieces of boneless chicken cooked in the tandoori was a disappointment. they were whitish dry chunks of chicken meat that had no distinct taste or colour and looked like they've been left out for too long. and i think they could be more generous with their mint yoghurt sauce since we ordered a tandoori platter.

the Goa fish curry could be spicier, but it was still fairly palatable. lady's fingers, no complaints. potatoes were good and the pillau rice was yummy and not too oily. the naan....well, it wasn't too bad. could be thinner and lighter though.

but wot the hell is the weird tasting chutney pickle like thingie they gave us on the side? i cant even begin to describe the taste. it was very salty and tasted bizarre and horrible. do they accompany this with their food like how we eat our sambal or belachan?---------*shivers*