Palais d'Ajit

NOT my best pic

Every time I went to an Indian resto, I always went back to the same one: Bombay Mahal on Jean-Talon. Every.Time. And I call myself a restaurant blogger! Pfff! I've been eating lots of Korean food, Japanase food, Chinese food, but Indian food? Scarcely. Yes. I used the word 'scarcely'. And I LOVE Indian food. On top of it, it's really like I'm doing it on purpose to not eat at Indian restaurants, because I have two perfectly good ones about a two minute walk from my place. I really do try.

Alex from work has visited le Palais d'Ajit a couple times and suggested we went there so I was totes in. I had a MAJOR butter chicken craving. And that ain't a craving you shake off. As soon as you enter, you notice that A: there are too many tables and that B: they are understaffed. OH, they are staffed good (I can say that!) for now, but in 10 minutes, when it'll get busy, they'll be in sh*t. And I'm all for 'the more tables we have, the more money we'll make but there's a limit to the madness. It was so tight that I had no room to get out from behind the table at the end of my meal. It was either go under the table and play peekaboo with Alex (which, in hindsight, could've been fun :p), or put my ass in someone's plate. Let's face it, neither my ass nor the people eating would have appreciated that. Thank goodness our neighbours were nice enough to get up and let me pass on their side!

The place itself looks like a lot of the Indian restaurants out there: kind of run down, yellow and brown with some more yellow-ish tones on the walls, a tv or two and some quick and rather bad service. Elephants, and lots of Hindu type-o-things (let's face it, not sure what those things are) hung out on the counter at the far end of the restaurant where you pay. Oh, but this place. This place had somethin' else. This place had Bollywood. Oh yes it did! Alex was right in front of the tv and pretty much had her mouth opened in awe the whole time. Because of this, I almost had my head permanently turned, which is probably how I got this crick in my neck :p But seriously, dem peeps are skilled fo shizzle! That choreography! Those 150 backup dancers!

I had what I've had many times: the non-vegetarian tali. Which, I must point out, was about 9 bucks or something ridiculously cheap like that. Basically, a mix of Indian goodness. You've got le butter chicken (for me, the pièce de résistance), the tandoori chicken, potatoes in a yummy stock, rice, salad (oh-so not necessary), nan bread (hello!) AND papadum, my favourite new thing. Let's start from the lower left and make our way clock wise! They were heavy, but that's how I always feel 'bout potatoes. They were bathing in some kind of stock which made them quite tasty. The perfect level of seasoning was used. Tandoori chicken was tasty but was slightly dry. The butter chicken didn't really meet my expectations, sadly. I mean, I LIVE for butta chicken when I go to Indian restos. The chicken wasn't... buttery enough. Not rich enough. Not good enough, damn it! The nan was heavenly. OK, so there's heaven, right? And then, well, there's the nan bread. And THEN, you put em' together! I had to stop myself #carboverload. It was just so fluffy and soft and, well, absorbant! Hahaha! What's better than nan bread? Dipped nan bread! Oh, and there was papadum. It is crisp, very thin, made of flour and chickpeas. This one had fennel seeds in there. It was quite lovely. Especially dipped in shtuff like the butta sauce! The rice was a tad dry and since I was apparently going cray cray on nan, I wasn't gonna eat that much rice #supercarboverload. That salad was there for no reason, like most small, tasteless salads made of iceberg and cabbage. USELESS. OK, I'm OK.

Service was meh. So meh that Alex gave it a 2 but I thought that was a tad exaggerated. First of all they shifted us twice because they had bigger groups coming. Second of all, the waiter gave me my thali while the plate was f*cking burning hot. Thanks for that second degree burn. The wait staff was not  looking very happy. Understandably... they were two for, at some point, about 60 people. I would not be smiling either. As Alex put it: the experience could be summed up like this: awesome Bollywood, very precious water. Hahaha!!! We had to run after the waiter with our hands up to get more. I hate asking for water, and you know it!

And now, the scores!

Food: 6
Service: 5

I really enjoy Indian food. Not sure if I'll go back because as much as I enjoy it, I do NOT enjoy bad service.

Rasoï

I was invited to another restaurant opening a couple weeks ago because well, that's what's happening now! And it's great! I'm really happy that my blog is getting recognition in the restaurant world :) Yay!!!

Anyhoot, this is a restaurant that's been opened for about one month and they had their official opening a couple weekends ago. I went with my friend Lea this time.

This indian restaurant is located about a 5 minute walk from Place St-Henri metro on Notre-Dame. It has about 60 seats plus about 20 downstairs. It has a modern style with cool paintings on the ceiling. You can tell they put a lot of hard work into making it the place that it is now. It has a good vibe going on and seems like a very chill place. The music was just loud enough (we could still hear each other talk). Oh and at some point, the belly dancers came out ! To add to the fun, they had henna in the basement!

Cajun Caesar and Mango Mojito

They have very original cocktails at Rasoi, so we decided that we absolutely had to have one! I had the Cajun Bloody Caesar: clamato, vodka, piece of bacon (wow!) and a green bean. What an insteresting mix! The green bean was very spicy but very enjoyable, and the bacon was, well, bacon! Mmmmmm! The only thing that I thought was unfortunate was that the drink itself did not taste like bacon OR green bean. 

Fish pakora with yogourt sauce

Let's talk food! We chose to share an entrée and share two mains. For the entrée, we had the fish pakora. It was really hot when it got to our table which is always appreciated! It had a really great and tasty blend of spices but a tad too much batter and not enough actual fish. The fish that WAS present though was very moist. No one likes dry fish! It also had a great yogourt based sauce to counter act the spiciness of it all. 

As for the main, we decided to have the less pricy mango, ahi tuna and sesame salad and the papaya and shrimp salad. To our dismay, there was no more tuna :( You'd think that on the official opening night, they would stock up, no? Anyway, they replaced the tuna with the shrimp---it was kind of weird how the waitress just brought us this 'new' salad without even checking with us if it was OK beforehand. Anyway, she told us it would be on the house so the fact that she didn't 'warn' us in advance kinda went away :)

Alright, let's get to the judgin'! The [green]papaya salad was largely underseasoned. Sad but true. On top of it, unfortunately, you could barely taste the papaya. The shrimp though, we're heavenly. HEAVENLY! Couldn't get enough of them. They were cooked perfectly, big like I like 'em and had this thick sauce that tasted of butter and coconut! We asked the waitress what was in that lovely sauce but apparently, the chef wanted to keep that a secret. Hey, I don't blame him/her!

Now, the mango salad with grilled shrimp. Again, even if the mango was very good and very present, the rest was very much underseasoned :/ The shrimp were really great and the vinaigrette on the salad tasted of fresh oranges (it also had orange wedges in there)!

Let's talk about the service! We had a warm welcome as soon as we got into the restaurant: 'Miss Prévost, please follow us to this table...'. I love hearing that! As soon as we sat down, we had water, which as you guys know by now, is super duper important to me. And for the rest of the evening, the water service was amazing. The waitress was very nice and friendly and took the time to go ask the chef if she was lacking answers to our questions. It did take a while to get our food though, and when we got it, as previously explained, it was lacking the most important thing: TUNA. All in all, she seemed a tad nervous and there were many people there for the opening so I don't blame her.

And now, the scores!

Food: 7 The shrimp were amazing but the salad itself was tasteless

Service: 7,5

I would go back to this restaurant for sure. No doubt about it. And I'd order the freaking tuna.