Over the years, I’ve had the opinion that any restaurant that has XXXXX Fusion cuisine will be a shitty foodie experience. This opinion has been generally validated with a couple exceptions as outliers to the norm. For me, if you can’t master and cook one type of cuisine … what makes you think that creating bullshit like Indeblue review

• Korean pulled pork tacos Indeblue review
• Chinese Vindaloo Indeblue review
• Indian Pad Thai Indeblue review

will ever make sense? This being said … Indeblue review

What does it take to get people to eat Indian food?

Living in Prince Edward Island … there is no fancy Indian food. There are satisfactory curries that you can get at Papa Joes, Churchill Arms or even the Factory Cookhouse – but they are perfunctory amalgams of what Indian food is about. Here in Philadelphia, there is no difference to the question. Indian food suffers from awful branding … in chatting with foodies of all ethnicities, the consensus is that Indian food is one of the most difficult to get a handle on … over the years, here’s a couple repeat opinions I’ve gotten on Indian food.

• I’m amazingly open to new food myself, but for some reason, I just can’t do Indian food.
• I’ve even had ‘good’ Indian food before, and still didn’t care for it too much — just me and my personal taste, not knocking those ethnicities or cultures of course.
• I am really excited about the opportunity to try new things that I never had access to before.  I would love to try Indian food, but I find myself intimidated by my lack of understanding what anything on the menu is.
• Indian food is one of those things that people either love or hate. not everything I’ve had I’ve particularly cared for.
• I’ve always been weary of Indian food, just for the fact that I have no idea what is what when I go to an Indian restaurant. (not that often either, since I don’t know Indian food, yes a vicious cycle).

With this being said … I’m not a huge fan of Indian food on the open market because of the following irrational thoughts …

• I think I can do it as well
• I think it’s too expensive
• I’m afraid of ghee or dairy in my dishes (completely crazy of me)
• I think the service will be shit or the place will look like a scene from a Geethanjali movie.
• I think that I’ll come out smelling like a curry bomb

Now opinions aside, I had the opportunity to try one of the fancier Indian restaurants in Philadelphia : IndeBlue. This was through

It’s a beautifully appointed space. I was immediately impressed by the decor, ambience and the lighting.

They have an amazing happy hour from 5pm-7pm and then from 8:30pm till close. It is a phenomenal value. I ended up ordering everything off the appetizer menu (sans dairy) for less than 30$

The result was the following (from top left and coming down) : Drums of Heaven, Vegetable samosa chaat, Crispy Spinach chaat, Tikka naan pizza, Crispy Cauliflower, Shrimp Koliwada Soft Taco, BBQ Pork Samosa rolls.

My commentary will focus on the food itself

 

I’ll give honorable mentions to the Shrimp Koliwada Soft Taco and the BBQ Pork Samosa rolls. They were very good … in fact, they were much better than I expected. I’ll make sure and take pictures when I repeat.

Overall, I thought that the unorthodox dishes worked but I’m very interested to try the traditional dishes to see how they do. I love seafood and rice … so if they can amaze me with a seafood biryani or spicy chicken/beef vindaloo – I’ll definitely be a convert.