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India Princess Crap-fest

$15 masala soup with a few chicken leg bits

The search for decent food in San Diego must of course include the requisite Indian look about. As of this date I haven't been to Punjabi Tandoor, which has been getting rave reviews on chowhound, but am also a quiet fan of Ashoka, even though chowhoundians hate it. They hate it because it has white people and is overpriced. I like it because they have big Taj Mahal beers, a nice atmosphere and sometimes do add spice when asked and actually do have pretty good food, I agree that they are absurdly overpriced though.

One recent place we got takeout from was India Princess in Hillcrest. Apart from the madness driving in Hillcrest on a Thursday evening, finding a sort of illegal parking space while I dashed into the restaurant, shelling out $50 for our meal and then splitting, the food, the reason for this takeout experience in the first place, was worse than getting there.

Ok India Princess owner, if you can look up my order you can maybe find out who I am, and if so give me a refund or something or make your food better please but don't come after me because I told it like it is. Your food sucks!

We had Keema Samosa appetizer (minced lamb samosa), nan bread, mixed pickle (achaar), chicken vindaloo (extra spicy please), chicken tikka masala (mild-med) and free rice (something Ashoka does not give, for some reason).

The Samosa was so deep fried it was as hard as a brick. When finally cracked open it spilled out over-fried chunks of very black meat and a few peas. The entire dish was so fearfully disturbing that I started to panic, even while pouring copious amounts of green mint spice over it and pretending I was eating something interesting.

One thing about Indian food, especially places with $15 entrees for some reason, they give you a bowl of sauce with a few pieces of chicken recently tossed into the sauce. That's what we got, no food in a lot of sauce for too much money, along with some weird short-grain rice that was sort of like Chinese mushy rice with a slight sweetness. The chicken tikka masala was basically orange yogurt with a few brown leg pieces of chicken (that you could tell they chucked in the already made sauce and heated on the stove).

The chicken vindaloo was spicy, I'll give them that, but it was the type of spicy that you know involved some dude showering the sauce with extra chili powder, not the type that involved actual cooking of the vindaloo. True vindaloo is incredibly complex in its spice, and it is very spicy, but it's also good tasting and has many layers of taste working at the same time. This one was just chili powder.

Ok, don't get me started on vindaloo. Why do Indian restaurants need to ask you how spicy you want it? The vindaloo curry is inherently spicy, very spicy. You say vindaloo you might as well say make that shit hot. But they ask, "ok buddy, how spicy, 1-10" or something. Who has mild vindaloo? It's impossible and should be. WTF?!!!

Anyway, Indian Princess vindaloo was overspiced (bad taste, not the heat) and filled with uncooked hard potatoes and pieces of brown leg meat of chicken and fat, which became unbearable (see picture to see how much I ate). Their raita was watery and predictable. The nan bread was like unflavored gum, chewy and bland. Their one saving grace were their homemade pickles which were still not marinated long enough and too salty.

Advice: Avoid India Princess like the plague. Please. I beg you.

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