Saturday, February 13, 2010

Review from the City Newspaper

Below is an excerpt of a review from the Rochester City Newspaper. The full review can be found at: http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/restaurants/articles/2010/02/Immigrant-restaurants-a-taste-of-home/

Romy Sial, owner of the Bombay Chaat House in Henrietta, is watching anxiously as I bite into a creamy, cardamom-scented ball of gulab jamun. A few moments ago, after I'd already eaten a plate of bhel puri (curried rice crispies topped with tamarind and mint chutneys, raita, and a generous shake of chili powder), two different samosas, and a kachori (a deep-fried pastry filled with lentils and spices), I told her that I don't really like Indian sweets. She asked me if I'd tried her carrot halwa or her gulab jamun as she walked behind her counter and started dishing me up a portion of both of them.


The tiny dining room has no polish, but it is all comfort, right down to the ceiling-mounted heater that blows down hot, curry-scented air. My table, with its plastic tablecloth patterned to look like white lace, could be in my grandmother's kitchen. The chairs are comfortable and look like they, too, came out of someone's kitchen.



The door opens and a blast of chilly air ushers two young people, both Indian, into the restaurant. They greet Sial as "Auntie" - a sign of both affection and respect. Sial beams at them, bustling about behind the counter while asking both of them about their classes, about upcoming and past job interviews, about how their winter vacations have been so far. All the while, she is moving about her kitchen, cleaning, rearranging, checking a pot on the household range on which she cooks everything, popping samosas into a microwave for a burst of heat. Sial shows her love through food: this is exactly like eating in my grandmother's kitchen, and the people who frequent the restaurant seem to be coming in as much for the warm reception as for the superlative Indian street food that Sial gets up at 6 every morning to make for them.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

the following review was originally pusblished in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle on Sept 17,2009.

Bombay Chaat House




Indian snack cuisine tickles the taste buds


Karen Miltner


Hey cheapsters, it's time to chat about chaat. About sassy, saucy snack food that goes snap, crackle and pop without milk or Saturday morning cartoons. About peculiar white lentils tucked inside fried dough and buried under an avalanche of chickpeas, yogurt, cilantro and puckering tamarind and cilantro chutneys. About how surprisingly tart and yummy salty yogurt is when you suck it through a straw like a milkshake. About the slippery and sloppy delight of eating the Indian equivalent of the Greek diner's rice pudding: curdled milk balls soaked in sugary milk and cardamom. It's time to chat about the Bombay Chaat House, the area's first of its kind Indian snack shack. Some Indian restaurants have chaat sections on their menus, but eating chaat in a restaurant before a regular meal doesn't live up to the spirit of chaat. Chaat is so delicious on its own it should spoil your appetite, not entice it. Even with its analogy as Indian snack or fast food, the chaat concept "is sometimes hard to explain," says owner Romy Sial. Chaat stands and carts are ubiquitous around her native India, and are becoming increasingly popular in larger American metropolitan areas. Sial's new operation is more permanent, with a few tables just in case you want to eat on the spot. Other people describe chaat as snacks. I like to think of chaat as an exhilarating but short-lived rendezvous between fried (and sometimes dried) and fresh (and often wet). Short-lived, because eating chaat is always a race against sogginess. The fried could be papri (fried wheat flour wafers, not unlike potato chips), bhel poori (puffed rice mélange that really does make the same sound as the cereal once the chutneys are added), samosa (vegetable-stuffed fritter) or kachori chaat (the lentil fritters with fixings described above). The fresh is boiled, cubed potatoes, chick peas, cilantro, chiles, yogurts and chutney. The other nice thing about snacks compared to meals is that they generally cost less. If you aren't hungry enough yet for lunch, you only have to commit $1 for a nice snack-sized samosa or $3 to $4 for the same samosa with the fixings. Bombay Chaat House also speedily delivers combo packages that you can call a real meal, such as chicken biryani. On Thursday, you can get chicken curry with vegetables and rice or naan ($6.99), and on Fridays and Saturday, chola bhatura (chickpeas with fried bread for $5.99). All this savory yang may need balancing with sweet yin. For that the chaat house obliges with Sial's own raas milai (milk-soaked milk balls mentioned earlier), gulab jaamun (fried milk balls) and an impressive spread of burfi (Indian fudge).


©2009 Metromix.com
http://rochester.metromix.com/restaurants/article/bombay-chaat-house/1470789/content