Great new Indian restuarant in Minneapolis

Residents and visitors of the Twin Cities now have a new excellent Indian restaurant to choose. Although the Twin Cities hosts a number of excellent Indian food sources, there is always room for one more!

I'm particularly excited about the most recent one, because I can walk there. When I lived in Washington, DC, we lived just one block from an excellent Indian restaurant, the White Tiger. That was a dangerous proximity!

We walked through the rain several blocks last week to the newly opened Gandhi Mahal at 3009 27th Avenue South--right next door to Midori's Floating World Cafe. Gandi Mahal is the site of the former Greek restaurant, Calypso, and other previously unsuccessful ventures.

As the Rake Magazine notes, it's unclear if the Mahatma would approve of the seafood and beef[!] entrees. The likeness of Gandhi looks over each table, making you uncomfortable to order a non-vegetarian dish. We compromised and got a chicken entree and a vegetarian thali (essentially a "sampler") to share. Both were excellent. I highly recommend the Chicken Tikki Masala. At first I thought the prices were high for Minneapolis standards. Each entree is $10-$16. But the portions are generous and the food is near perfect. Unless you are fairly hungry, two adults could split a single entree. (But then you wouldn't have leftovers for home--and what is better than 2nd day Indian for lunch the next day?)

Because they are new, no liquor license yet. But I believe you can bring your own wine and serve yourself in the meantime. The restaurant can provide wine glasses. AND, there is a liquor store directly across the street! So you can order your food, and then figure out what kind of wine works best as you take a quick stroll across the street. (I like a dry German Reisling with spicy Indian food myself.)

Two funny things about the restaurant. First, mahal means palace, which isn't the first thing I associate with Gandhi. Second, they don't have a website. Seriously, if you have a new business that serves customers, you need a website. It doesn't have to be fancy. It should have a picture, your menu, links to any good reviews, a phone number, address, and hours. Nothing flashy. Just spend the $50 to host and put it up!

Thankfully, they do have an email address. Here are the details:

Gandhi Mahal
Indian cuisine, lassi bar, and thali-tapas
3009 27th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55406
612-729-5222
612-729-5953
gandhimahal@gmail.com

Bye Bye Dara

Twin Citians who have occasionally grabbed the free weekly, the City Pages, are most likely familiar with restaurant critic Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl. Despite giving great reviews of all the foodstuffs the Twin Cities have to offer, she's a colorful and hilarious writer. She can come up with the most outlandish and lengthy metaphors in her task to give you the most accurate sense of the restaurant. To make a point on the cost of wine, she started one article the following way:

Recently I received a sad and plaintive email from a doctor's wife. She wanted to use my bank account to free a Nigerian fortune worth, if you can believe it, hundreds of millions of dollars. And she chose me! As I crowbarred my neighbors' windows in search of additional Social Security numbers, I wondered why she picked me, and then I realized: All the big restaurants I've reviewed lately have been expensive, and more expensive. Of course she would think that the Twin Cities was a land of nothing but millionaires: The price of an average glass of wine seems to have zoomed from $6 to $9, and as far as the dinner entrees, $23 seems to be the new $12.

The City Pages was recently bought by a national media company that owns the Village Voice. Both before and after the change in ownership, the weekly's talented writers have gone to greener pastures. Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl's departure solidifies the City Pages' downfall in my eyes. I'll still take a look at it from time to time, but it's not the newspaper it once was.

Moskowitz Grumdahl will now write for the Minnesota Monthly magazine. Local media critic David Brauer writes about the meaning of this departure in his December story City Pages just lost its sugar mama in the MinnPost.

This week she writes her final piece with the City Pages. It's probably not of interest to first time readers, but fans may appreciate it: Bye-Bye - January 30, 2008

For most of her career at the City Pages, she was simply Dara Moskowitz. Then she got married and added the Grumdahl. Personally, I don't know why someone with the last name Moskowitz would add the equally large portioned Grumdahl, but perhaps I shouldn't be too critical when it comes to choosing names.