Restaurant Review - Saravana Bhavan in Edsion NJ

Where: Saravana Bhavan(http://www.saravanabhavan.com/), one of the real Saravana Bhavan's chain that recently opened its doors in Edison, New Jersey. We were there on a Sunday afternoon - about 12:30 PM ( We went with a bunch of kids and hence following the golden rule that earlier with kids to any place is safer and better). Restaurant was just starting to get busy at that time. Saravana has specials that they start making available from 1 PM and that time seems to be the beginning of some serious amount of crowd in the restaurant.

Food: Well this is a saravana bhavan and hence you can definitely expect the Saravana standard that you are used to in Chennai and various other Saravana locations. The food was great ( obviously by US Standards - in India Saravana is just a middle income chain - nothing more to it). Amongst ourselves, we ordered a few sada dosas, mini tiffin and a south indian lunch. The food got served up very promptly (All Saravana restaurants all across US and India are known for their efficiency in getting food to the table and this was no different) and the overall service was good. Since it was almost becoming like a Zoo it was getting little bit difficult to get the waiter's attention. So when we needed a few spoons - we just walked to the area where spoons were and picked it up. Overall the food was what i expected from a saravana bhavan.

Ambience: Since this Saravana is the newest in US - they have done an awesome job of setting up an "OPEN KITCHEN". This works really well when you are with kids -as kids can go and watch what is going on in the kitchen. This is really a very kewl thing and I think this definitely differentiates them from other restaurants easily as well as even within other Saravana bhavans here in North America.

Price: I feel this is abour right for the fare they provide.

Service: I thought the service was ok - given the headcount that these guys were handling.

Overall Rating: A random desi rating of 8.5 out of a possible 10. As long as they maintain the saravana quality they should be in good shape.

Restaurant Review - Saravana Palace (Vegetarian) -Fairfax

Where: Went to saravana palace (http://www.saravanapalaceva.com/) - a relatively new restaurant in the ever increasing count of Indian restaurants here in the Northern Virginia area. We were there on a Saturday evening - about 7:30 PM and the restaurant was not very busy at that time. However, by the time we were leaving the place got real busy and there were folks waiting to get in. It definitely has become a popular indian restaurant and for all the right reasons.

Food: We ordered appetizers -Spring Rolls and Chinese Hakka Noodles - turnaround time was pretty quick on both - Spring rolls seemed to have either come out of a box or from some deep frozen section -but was very kid friendly. Chinese Hakka Noodles was very well made - I am sure if you asked they would spice it up some more.
Tomato soup arrived on time and was reasonably decent - there was a clear rasam taste to it indicating that they at least tried to use some south indian flavor for the soup.
Our entrees came in reasonably good time as well - we had ordered Dosas (Sada dosa and the Rava masala dosa) along with a Malabar Parotta. Rava masala was pretty good and the sambar and the ginger/tomato chutney that accompanied it was pretty well made. In general the sides that came (various chutneys) were pretty good.
The Malabar parotta itself was decent - the avial needed some help though and was pretty bland. The mango lassi was standard Indian restaurant fare, but the salt lassi was more like "Buttermilk - South Indian style" - Reminded me of "Tower - Indian restaruant in Raleigh North Carolina - which I think is by far the BEST South Indian restaurant in the entire North American continent - a new review for Tower will follow later.
Overall the food was pretty good.

Ambience: Standard Indian look and feel with Green sofas/booths and chairs in the middle. I dont understand why any darn indian restaurant would use tables that keep dancing from one side to another - even if you touch them. No special theme was visible. It looked exactly like going to Woodlands (which is literally 1/2 mile away from these guys).

Price: Extermely reasonable prices. I didnt see any entries other than Thaali that went over 10 dollars.

Service: These guys need to really improve on their service. They are alright -but given the fact that Woodlands is NOT a whole lot different in fare than what these guys offer - they need to definitely provide service that is better. Their table management needs serious improvement (they should play Diner Dash Online game at yahoo to get their table management skills right!) and they could do a little bit of checking with the customer to see if they are doing alright and such. Small niceties go a long way and for some reason most of the Indian restaurants DONT get it (starting to change though)

Overall Rating: A random desi rating of 7 out of a possible 10. Their price/food quality is the key driver for this rating. If one of the two falls they are on deep trouble.

Some funny sprite commercials

"Obey your thirst" advertisements

Restaurant Review - Mayuri - Herndon/Reston Virginia

Here is a review of Mayur restaurant out in the Herndon/Reston area in Northern Virginia. This is a vegetarian friendly review - so for those that eat meat your experience/mileage may vary.
Location: Mayur is located at the South Lakes Mall complex off Reston Parkway. Ambience is slightly above average.
Went there on a Friday night - the place was about 3/4 th busy. Ordered the cut Mirchi and Paneer Pakora for appetizers along with some drinks. The owner himself comes and takes orders - so you can pretty much tell him what the level of spice needs to be. All the appetizers turned to be above average - both in terms of size and portions. For the main course we had ordered a variety of items - a thali with Bindi Masala, an Uttappam, a plain dosa, a rava masala dosa and a Veg Biryani. The turnaround time was slightly longer (may be because they were slightly busy) - however the service was excellent. I have definitely started seeing the trend of Desi restaurant owners starting to treat desi clientile more decently whereever I go in North America. I guess it probably has to do more with the economics- Desis have no issues spending for food or for kids- and I think business owners are beginning to take notice of that. The food at Mayur was really enjoyable (barring the Biryani - which was really less than the average) with oil levels not that bad.

Overall I give Mayur a Desism rating of 7 out of a possible 10.

Restaurant Review - Andhra Bhima's at Milpitas, CA

I recently had an oppurtunity to visit Andhra Bhima's for the first time when I was in Bay area. Me and couple of my friends went there after a movie at IMC6 (Review of tamil movie "Sillandhru Oru Kodhal" will be posted real soon ). The good news about Bhima's is there is a LOT of space inside. The bad news is parking - not necessarily because that Bhima's is doing great business - but it is surrounded by some vietnamese "hudda" and hence the crowd. Anyways, I ordered the Andhra Spicy Thali - the food arrived fairly quickly. Those were the only good things about Bhima's. Food was pretty pedestrian - my friends ordered something else and that turned out pretty much ordinary. If you are looking to spend your money on decent South Indian vegetarian food in Bay area - then Saravana Bhavan near Mary's and Homstead is the best place to be. Nothing beats it.

I am giving Bhima's a Desism Rating of 5 on 1 to 10 scale.

What is Indian or Bharatiya culture??

Let us see if I can touch a nerve or two here. I am sitting here early AM in front of my muted TV (Sun TV) . There is a program that is going on "Thirai Masala" and it has been really funny to watch this program. In the 3 songs that has gone by ever since I started kinda "watching" - following has happened
- the heroine has been lifted by the hero 7 times
- the heroine's upper garment has been dislodged 5 times
- heroine meaniglessly running around holding her clothes 4 times
-hero and heroine bending together forwards or backwards - 7 times.
- Hero walking as if he is going to "conquer" something - 4 times

I am pretty sure that the stats would be similar for any Indian language (not just Tamil).

What is wrong with us people?? Seriously, I just dont get it. More importantly is this culture.

The culture talk reminds me of another interesting incident that happened last week that got me thinking as well. As some of you may know - the currently popular tamil actor Surya married tamil actress Jothika last week ( Sep 10th I think). My sister insisted that I take a look at the photos. There were 2 photos that I initially laughed at.
The first one was "Kalaingar Karunanidhi" the current Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu blessing the "Thaali (mangalsutra)" for the couple - This is the guy that has 3 wives. So I wondered out loud that if this guy blesses the couple then Surya should have a jolly good time!. The second photo was "Amma" Jayalalitha - coming and blessing the couple. Hmm- let me see - a person with pretty dubious distinction and sexual preference blessing a couple.

While I ROFLed on this - I realized that bharata janam (be it tamil or any other) have pretty weird standards. While they can publicly accept the fact that Karunanidhi has 3 wives or conviniently ignore the fact that Jayalalitha could be a lesbian (there I said it - I was trying to make this blog - family friendly - who the F*** cares any more) - they care and protest a lot more for matters like a "Kushboo's interview about chastity in TN" ( http://www.indiaglitz.com/channels/tamil/article/25296.html)

Is this the great Indian culture? or Bharata Culture? For tamils that read this blog - I ask this question - is this "Tamizhar panpaadu"? How can a culture be so insensitive to flagrant violations of the few? Is this because we are "Cultureless"?

More on this soon.

A MP3 player for runners and joggers that works with Yahoo Music Unlimited!

I am on this quest to buy a decent and not too expensive mp3 player that will work with Yahoo's music unlimited service. I have an older version of Apple ipod music that pretty much stops everytime when I cross the 5 mph speed limit (Can't blame the ipod as the product is a hard drive based on). Also, it is unfortunate that ipod shuffle doesnt work with Yahoo Music at all - otherwise that will be my first and only choice.

Based on my research these are the things that I believe one should look for in deciding on a MP3 player

- Make sure that MP3 player is flash drive based player (no moving parts). This would automatically restrict the size of your song collection to less than 2 GB - but being a player with no moving parts you should get more reliable performance.
- As far as possible try to buy a device that Yahoo kinda recommends or someone mentioned in their website that it works.
- Understand the lingo. Almost most of the devices that are there in the market say they support "Play for Sure" technology. All this means is that they support mp3 files that have been bought in stores like Yahoo, Rhapsody, Napster etc. It DOES NOT mean that they work with a subscription service like Yahoo Unlimited.
- Read the CNET reviews and the user reviews. CNET reviews are probably more reliable than anything else out there

My buying experience
09/17/06 - I went and bought a Sansa C140 yesterday (as it was selling for cheap in Costco). Big mistake - this is a piece of junk - clumsy, operations are fairly non-intuitive, proprietary USB cable etc. Going to walk this back to the store.

10/12/06 - After returning the Sansa C140 (that was a while ago) - I went and bought Zen Nano plus 1 GB mp3 player. I bought this one for 2 reasons
a) On Sale at circuit city for 44 bucks.
b) Creative website mentioned that this device supports Yahoo Unlimited ( Talk about truth in advertising - more that on just a minute)

After bringing it home and updating with its latest firmware, I tried to configure it so that Yahoo music would pick it up. No luck. In reading through Creative and other blogs - I realized that this sucker was incompatible with Yahoo Music Unlimited as well. When Creative says that this device is compatible with Yahoo Unlimited - all it means is that whatever songs you BUY (as in in BUY) is movable to the player - but NOT the songs that you have selected and paying Money for the ON THE GO functionality of Yahoo. It seems that the best list to follow is the very SMALL list that Yahoo provides ( it is on their site for compatible devices). My next stop is to go buy a Zen V as I dont want any external hard drive -much prefer flash drive). Will keep this blog updated.

Curd Rice and South Indians

Some real random thought from the deep left field here ..

You are a South Indian (most likely a tamil) travelling with your family to places unknown- and 2 days into the trip - you get this withdrawl symptoms of this disease called Curd Rice Deprivation. I have often wondered why the heck I am so hooked onto this "Thachi Mammu" thing. Is this a gene thing?. Almost ready to say that it is - my kid who was born and brought up here in US can't do with curd rice for more than 2 days. We were out and about a few weeks ago - and my kid made me stop in some unknown place near Buffalo to go to a Wegman's. We got the rice from their restaurant/carryout and a plain yoghurt and added some pickle (aka "Oorugai") to it - and my kid felt better instantly.

Any thoughts/musings about the same are welcome.

Indian - eternally in bondage.

I have a feeling that folks from the great country of Bharat or India always want to be the followers and never the leader. I am not sure as to when the subservience came into effect
- Was it conditioned by the British Raj that happened much later in our history?
- Was it because of the fact that the alluvial plains were too rich and the fact that much of the India didnt go through the kind of turmoil that Europe did in early times make Indians more complacent to things?

As much as IT is currently driving some of the changes that India is seeing, I still feel that the type of work that Indians do is things that folks in US or UK dont want to do. And I also think that Indians do put up with crap that someone out here would simply not consider doing out here.

A case in point - I work for a fairly big software company in the world (Real big) and we use a lot of our Indian counterparts to run demos for our prospects here in US. Not too long ago, we had one scheduled at 12 PST that ran for about 4 hours. The sales guy that was working with me didnt even show any remorse or concern about the fact that there were these 2 girls out in our Indian facility staying all night ( I knew they had to come early to get the demo ready). He just assumed that these resources were available at his disposal all the time. I felt really bad about this whole thing. Is this the cost of us progressing? Is this even progress? Are we going back to our old habits here?
Whatever the reason is - I think it is time that India in general and Indians in particular break out of this bondage.
But How?

See my upcoming posts for thoughts on the same.

What does a desi do on a "long" weekend.

You are a married desi living in the NorthEast USA AND
a) has kids OR
b) your parents (or in-laws) visiting (read baby-sitting if a) is true)
and a "long" weekend arrives
I am willing to take a bet that the following places will automatically be in a desi's mind
a) Niagara Falls - I think desis are somehow attracted by Niagara. I would be lying to you if I said that Niagara was not in my list of long weekend visits.
b) Pittsburg temple - Suddenly as a desi I feel "I am loosing my religion" and especially with parents visiting the Pittsburg venkateshwara temple immediately goes to the top of the list.
c) New Jersey /New York - Actually this will be a new york visit -but a visit to a friend/relative in New Jersey would be the event that drives this visit.
d) Washington D.C - Nation's capital

If you are not doing any of these things - you probably are scrambling and calling other messed up desi parents like you asking if their kids want to have a playdate. I want to hear comments from other desi parents as to how close I am in this hypothesis.

Desi rankings for sedans in the 25K-40K range.

We started looking for a new car yesterday. My current car staple is a very desi ( Honda Civic and a Honda Odyssey eh!) standard template . In this blog, I am going to test drive and rank these cars based on what I consider car desisms:
Car Desism 1: Should have good resale value
This desism comes from the fact that as desis we immediately look at things long term. I think this safeguard is just built within us and comes into play automatically. I think it is a very ASIAN thing ( if folks here can actually remember that we are freaking ASIAN too!).

Car Desism 2: Gotta be a 4 door
Gotta be able to move people (read parents that live with you and cater to your babysitting needs - more on this on a different blog and children) - during weekends to the temple or wherever the next high-carb consumption party is happening.

Car Desism 3: Price-Performance should be good.
For god's sake we are plunkering 25K!+ goddamit

Car Desism 4: The Desi Wow! factor
Everyone wants to be this kewl Desi that his desi breathren is not. We hate to admit it - but dont you feel bad when you reach the same conclusion that thousands of Desis reach - that a Toyota or Honda or Acura or Mercedes is the best car in the entire "White" world. I have seen some of my friends not to conform to this - this is that occassional Land Rover desi dude - just to prove a point that desis can think like "ghoras"

Car Desism 5: The Desi Status Symbol Thang!
Gotta drive a Mercedes or Lexus or BMW 5 series.

With these things in mind -I have begun test driving. I am going to update the blog and give a Desism Car ranking on a scale of 1-10 (10 being a definite desi buy).

Volkswagen Passat
We thought this will be a "different' car - no one in our friend circle has it - NOT a HONDA or TOYOTA ( See Car Desism 4). Turns out that Passat is NOT a desi car as Desism 1 and Desism 3 overrides whatever goodness this car is.

Verdict: Passat is NOT a desi car - this is for someone that has this weird affliction to things European.

Updates to this thread follows as I go through testing these cars.

Living in Bay area to living elsewhere in US.

It has been 4 years since I moved to Northern Virginia from the great place that is Silicon Valley. All these 4 years I have been trying to find one darn good reason to feel that NoVA is a better area to live than the valley. I reach the same conclusion when that thought runs through me. Silicon Valley is the best place to live in the entire world (yes I mean it - and I was born and brought up in India !) despite the fact that it sits on top of a set of active fault zones and despite the fact that the housing prices are always out of whack.
I have seen people give reasons as to why they think NoVa is best ( We get to see all 4 seasons! - which is the most bogus bullcrap that any Desi can give IMO) - but the fact that you can have 300 fairly clear sunny days in the valley beats any arguments for any other place. Add to the fact that as an IT professional, I feel like valley hums innovations all the time.
Some of the things that I like about the Bay area:
- If you are a pretend or wannabe health freak - you got the best accessible trails in my mind. I used to live in Fremont and going out to Mission Peak in Fremont every saturday during summer days (and looking at the big house that MC Hammer built and lost )>
- You got the beaches in an hour's drive. Personally like the Santa Cruz beach and the beaches that line up from Santa Cruz out to Half Moon Bay when you drive out to San Francisco on Highway 1.
- You got the mountains and gambling in about 3 hours drive out to Lake Tahoe.
- The place is probably one of the vegetarain friendly place to live outside of India.

More on this later..

Breakfast buffet at Chutney's Indian Vegetarian Restaurant - herndon, VA

This morning I visited Chutney - a South Indian vegetarian restaurant that is out in herndon clock tower area ( Mc Nair Nagar) . Some of my friends had raved about this place. So I was pretty psyched in going to the place. It is a breakfast buffet that Chutney provides on weekend mornings- idli,dosa,pongal (or so I think) and vada. My first impressions on Chutney - Extremely pedestrian. Not worth the $7.50 that you gotta cough up for the breakfast. I think Woodlands weekend lunch buffet is more value (if you are vegetarian - which I am). The amount of carbs that you can eat in one setting is a completely different story!
I came away thinking that I am not going to go back there for a while while.

Height of desi madness - banning the DaVinci Code..

I just read this news item about the State of Punjab banning Davinci code as it offends the minority community feelings. This ban follows the ban acts states of Mizoram,Nagaland etc.
I am simply amazed by the fact that these states are sensitive to the minority - but completely insensitive to what is going on with the "oppressed minority" forward castes with regards to reservation.
I am frankly pissed at these politician asswipes that just cater to their minority votebank. It is interesting to note that even vatican didnt ask the movie to be banned - however all the Catholics in India are suddenly offended by the fact that the movie portrays Jesus as a mere mortal. Offended is one thing -but to curtail free speech is a different beast.

More asswipes to be pissed off about- Tamilnadu, AP and Punjab bans Davinci code as well. All these indian politicians are vermins.