Khana khazana: a restaurant; a review

Those who can, do; those who can’t, review. There is a whole career to be made out of nit-picking; it is called being a critic. So, here I go try to be an amateur critic. This time it is a restaurant. My work takes me to recruiting trips across the college campuses in the country. Most of these trips I spend time fighting the strong urge to back to school and taking photographs of the beautiful buildings and the old trees( I also do tech interviews somewhere in there). American school campuses seem to be the last place where you see old trees and old buildings any more ... in snob-speak culture, art and history :). When on these trips, I eat occasionally and this review is from my recent visit to a college campus in the mid-west.

The Review
A simple enough shop front. Double-door entry, presumably to keep the cold out? The dark carpet and off white walls with yellow lighting greets me.
Hello, table for one?
The nice blond girl asks me, her black tie and white shirt don’t make her any less of a pleasant girl next door. She guides me to a secluded corner table by the window, the maroon and gold drapery overpower the window and weird Grecian statuette in bronze sits in the window, I don’t quite get the point, but then I look around. Christmas lights drape a pillar in the middle of the eating space and the walls around. The big-wide dinning hall is set up with cheap formica table and ‘tent house’( rental) chairs. The tables have linen table cloths covered with a sheet of transparent glass and solitary bud vase with a fake orchid. The silver ware is wrapped in a paper napkin, which seesm vaguely at odds with the luxurious look of the table cloth and draperies. I look around; pots of fake ferns and ivy cling to the ceiling. A wall scone with ugly red leaf caladium, which is horrible enough real ... plastic, does nothing to improve its charms. Framed posters of blooming renoir roses on the walls and the madhubani- style prints of radha, Krishna and gopi(s). As if to remind the diners of the Indian culture a golden temple poster and strip proclaiming jai shree ram, a poster elucidating geeta -saar and another one with gayatri mantra.
The decor in indian restaurants always leaves me surprised... There is some much going as far as Indianizing a look is concerned.. what happened? Why is it limited to cheap posters of taj mahal and golden temple and completely unbalanced madhubani knockoffs with unbelievably long torso-ed (with choli's that defy description) and shockingly blue ( or black ) face Krishna? I have seen a couple Indian restaurants that look pleasant, one had done a decent job with draped saris on the walls, the look was very harem-ish and not quite Indian, still it was better than the regular fare.
The other one was a cafe, with garage sale gathered mismatched tables and chairs painted pretty spring colors ( lime and lemonade and cherry blossom), the lighting was turned over colanders as lamp shades for bulbs hanging from the pipes in the ceiling ( it was a turned around warehouse), each table had mechanical puzzles, I used to spend hours and hours, the food was awesome, non greasy and wholesome( very home cooked) and the owners were an adorable couple who talked of a Delhi before my time... they closed. Sigh!

The Food
It was buffet, in the evening... which took me by surprise, not very many offer a buffet in the evening. The spread was limited on the number of items but there were some unusual things like bhel-puri, fruit cream, upma, aloo bhaaji, chicken vindaloo, kadhi and non-orange-tandoori chicken.
I opted for Kadhi, Upma, Goat curry and raita with Naan. Kadhi was lovely, suitably tart and non viscous, with pakodas weren’t that great, hard centers and too much besan. The goat curry was awesome, the meat was succulent( not dry) and the curry did not overpower with tomatoes or garam masala. Upma was nice and grainy -- perfect consistency and tasted light and fluffy, rather like a well stirred halwa, only salty :) .The raita had grated carrots, which did nothing for the texture or the taste.

Dessert
The pièce de résistance, fruit cream. I haven't had fruit cream since my mom made it for us, when I was in high school( you don’t want to know when that was :)). It was suitably sweet and creamy, and tasted nothing like the knockoffs in condensed milk or sweetened yogurt. It had apples (fresh) and cherries and pineapples (canned).... delicious. I (in a generous mood) had once taken someone to have a cherry coke from Ruby's. It was a sweltery hot day and this elixir called cherry-coke is coke on ice with grenadine and canned cherries. It is a little piece of heaven when it is hot and you are parched. My guest took a sip and remarked upon the artificial flavoring in the cherries 'I can smell it from a mile away'... um, that was so not the point dude, this is not gourmet coffee… it is coke... But I digress. So canned cherries in the fruit cream, along with the pineapple and grapes and apples, made for a yummy dessert. The gulab jammun, standard out-of-a-box fare, nice and hot with no lumps in the center, so not bad.

The Chai
As my Brit friend Tony said, you Indians ruin a perfectly good cup of tea. He must have been talking about the tea I had here. They had taken delicate Darjeeling tea, light and very fragrant and added tons of tea masala and boiled itlong enough with enough milk to murder any delicacy. With the first sip I wondered if it was the case of over-boiled tea-- made with leftover tea leaves that have been boiled for long. But then, I realized that it was a 'weak tea leaves' made in 'strong style'. What a waste …

Verdict

decor - 4/10
food - 7.5/10
dessert - 8.5/10
chai- 2.5 /10

Regret

My life seems to be full of the usual struggles right now. It is quaint, this feeling of deja vu. Work stress and work hope. As you might have guessed work forms a fair part of my life ( the rest of it is my six year old.. and yes, I know I have a limited life :D)
Anyhow, questions I ask myself... where do I want to go? What is most important to me? When I look back in 10 years time what things would I have regret doing? and more importantly what things would I regret not doing? And what could I have done differently (knowing what I know now) ten years ago?
The last one is the easiest question. I think for a bit, but I know, I would not have done anything differently. The decisions I took and the life I've led, the mistakes I have made and the tears I have cried have very much made me who I am today. And I really like who I am, now, more than ever. Looking back at all those years, I realize that I have almost no regrets of having not done something. I have, if anything taken crazy risks... and put everything at stake, I have lost and lost some more, yet.
So, the question then --- what is it that I am really afraid of?

I am afraid of regret.

Ha, nice!

So, here's to regret--

He said I was in my early forties,
with a lot of life before me
And one moment came that stopped me on a dime
I spent most of the next days,
looking at the x-rays
Talking bout' the options and talking bout' sweet times.
I asked him when it sank in, that this might really be the real end
How's it hit 'cha when you get that kind of news?
Man what did ya do?
He said:

I went skydiving
I went rocky mountain climbing
I went two point seven seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I'd been denyin'
And he said some day I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dyin'