The One with the Indian Food

Another point of this blog is not to simply take care of me, but to take care of my primary love (not a boy), which is food.

This is long overdue, but by God, I promise I will go back to that place and adore the food that graces my plate. The name of the restaurant is Queens Crystal Garden. It's along Jupiter Avenue in Makati and they're open for lunch. So if you want to grab some friends, head on to that place and pick your food from their wide menu! It's amazing!

Just entering the place, you know it's fit for a Bollywood queen! The interior had high ceilings and you can't imagine how much I had to crane my neck just to see the whole area. It's like a 5-star hotel sprawled and adorned with velour and velvet all over!

Captivating furniture to help you feel like a queen. That's actual hardwood seating right there, next to a royal red table cloth contrasted against yellow velvet. It's almost royal! 

The wall is adorned with pictures of Ganesha. The pictures seem etched on thin paper (not sure if it's Papyrus). 

That's a bronze representation of Ganesha, once more, with some of the awards they've won and a little shrine to India. 

Because you eat with your eyes first, and we were freaking hungry after the slightly long and hot walk to Queens, we wanted meat and lots of yummy Indian bread. Guess what we had first?

In case it's not obvious, it's beer we're drinking. In the middle of the afternoon, in high bustling heat. Candy seemed fine. 

There's the handsome Pareng Ken with his shades on, posing next to my Super Dry. 

After the niceties over some ice cold delicious beer, we had to have our sampler so, on to our love for breads! There were so much to choose from and so little time cos we were so hungry. It's a good thing that Ken decided to get the Pudina Naan, which is unleavened flat bread made of potato, some yoghurt and dry yeast and it gets the word Pudina because of the mint (yup, guys, mint's not just for Mojitos!!!). Candy and I opted for the Roti which is also unleavened bread made of wheat and a lot of unclarified butter.

Candy's tearing into a Roti Channai. It's basically unleavened bread, with a little bit of sweetness embedded in it. It's perfect dipped in hot delicious curry. The green bread you see in the far right (top) is Pudina Naan (which literaly translates to Mint Naan Bread). 

This is a heaping pot of mutton curry which is so rich and so good and so delicious. It makes my mouth water just thinking about the flavors and the delicious, amazing feat it took the cook to make it so damned rich and creamy! 

Of course, no meal for me is complete without meat. I'm a little Western, I work like a sailor and I eat like a trucker so I got to have my protein. The waiter was kind enough to suggest a sampler. The sampler contained everything you'd ever dream of in Indian cuisine. It featured fish, chicken, mutton and delicious shrimp. It's almost orgasmic!

The fish was cooked to perfection. It was so creamy and flaky and you literally can use your fork and flake it out. The green coating in the fish was minty, fresh and it had the right amount of citrus in it. The mutton was thick and chewy and so meaty. Everything about the mutton was just accentuated right with the mint chutney, it was almost perfection. The shrimp was lightly seared in a pan and the flavor was just so light and so perfect. It made the whole experience almost tie together perfectly cos it complemented everything else in the plate. My personal favorite was the reddish curry-dipped chicken. It was fried lightly but the batter made the chili so much hotter. The flavor actually bursts in your mouth! And the mint chutney on this was just wowza - I can't stop eating and you can ask Ken and Candy, I think I was wiping the last drops of the chutney with the last piece of chicken I got.

The mint chutney (far right, green dipping sauce) made everything so much more delicious than it could ever be! I'm so glad Ken asked for it! 

The last piece of the puzzle was a Paneer dish. Paneer is actually unaged, acid-set cheese. It was lightly basted with a few mint leaves and some vegetables and I think it just capped off the perfect lunch.

Food I eat rarely? Not anymore. Indian food is one of my favorites now. Ajeet, a friend told me to get Masala Dosa the next time, which I will. I promise to have more pictures of the delicious food next time!

All pictures were taken with a Sony DSC series camera. 
Apart from making sure that his friends try Masala Dosa, Ajeet is also a great and amazing blog author. Don't read his blog and die. :) 
Candy is a blogger herself and she loves Indian food just like I do. Read about her food trips and her riveting stories on Define. 
Queen's Crystal Garden is on 146-B Jupiter Street, Makati. Check out their official webby here.