Restaurant Review: Pind Balluchi 

www.pindballuchi.com
Shop No.2, 4th Floor, Garuda Mall, Magrath Road, Bangalore - 560025

I’m striving to maintain a low-carb diet of late and what’s better for a low carb diet than a kabob? All protein, tons of flavor and minimal fat, quite possibly the perfect low-carb food there is. So after 4 days of eating the same hotel buffet food at the Royal Orchid, today I headed out to central Bangalore for Pind Balluchi, a Punjabji restaurant boasting its meaty entrees.

Now at this point I feel I must go into another of my pontifications about the variations in sub-continental food, in this case, meat preparations. As a general rule, the further north you go from the bottom  tip of India the ‘meatier’ and more carnivorous the meat dishes get. The gravies become spicier, deeper and richer in flavor; the meat more routinely has bones (as opposed to boneless chunks) and the diet becomes more heavy and rustic. When you reach Afghanistan (which was part of India many hundreds of years ago) the food is today, not much different from how Genghis Khan might have eaten it 1500ys ago, sitting around a campfire, 10 soldiers eating out of a large communal pot under the stars, warming their warworn fingers over the dull red embers under the wide skies in the flat, rolling tempes of central Asia.

 

Even the same dish, say tandoori chicken, prepared by communities further north is more flavorful than tandoori chicken prepared in the south. Tandoori chicken made in south/central India is typically one-dimensional with a limited blend of spices and a thin coating of masala. Mind you, this doesn’t mean its not hot, it’s just not very spicy – we have to make the clear distinction between spicy food, and hot food, when it comes to cuisine of the greater Indian subcontinent. However, Pakistanis and Afghanis make their tandoori chicken with a more complex balance of cumin, chilly powder and lemon juice, deeply marinated and cooked until the flavors run deep and strong. Indian tandoori chicken is milder and somewhat lighter. You might compare that to a stuffed, deep dish Chicago pizza where each slice is 1” thick and overflowing with meat and cheese, to a San Diego pizza with tofu, spinach and no cheese…to each his own.

Punjabi food sits somewhere in between the two extremes, which brings us back to Pind Balluchi, a Punjabi restaurant smack in the southern Indian city of Bangalore, where easily half the population is vegetarian, but who’s counting.

Pind Balluchi is on the 4^th floor of a mall, but that’s kind of how most of India is laid out, in malls and developed complexes (throwback to the Irvine Spectrum for my fans from SoCal). The managers at Pind Balluchi clearly know how to put up a smashing décor rivaling the deliberate yet clichéd efforts of XXXX. There’s a man in a traditional Punjabi pathan outfit and a sword, standing guard outside to greet you. As you walk in you’re accosted on one side by a large water wheel turning under the gentle gurgle of stream and some fierce looking, life sized figurines of Pathan fighters to your left. The servers are very attentive and polite. I was seated almost immediately even though the place was packed on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of the mall rush (where all the 24yr old girls go with their boyfriends, and their boyfriend’s posse, by the way).

 

They immediately took my order – I went for the ‘kabob festival’ which they’ve been heavily advertising consisting of a platter of assorted kabobs, chicken, lamb and fish. The food arrived in less than 10min and it came on a steaming hot platter adorned with three sauces. Unfortunately, the flavor fell short of the façade. The malai chicken kabob was soft and cashew’y indeed, but simply too mild for my taste. I couldn’t really enjoy it without one of the sauces coming to the rescue.  The chicken kabob was pretty decent however it seemed only barely cooked through from the inside.  A kabob is to be served firm and moist on the inside, yet slightly dry and seared on the outside. This balance is reached by incorporating the right proportion of fat and starch in the kabob mix and coating, and by cooking it at the right temperatures, for the right times. For instance, in Indian (or sub continental) cooking, there’s no such thing as ‘rare’ or ‘medium rare’, its well done, or its done wrong. This undercooking didn’t stop at the chicken, it carried on to the fish kabobs that were just a little too ‘wet’ on the inside. I asked the head waiter to re-grille them and he was very nice about it, understanding that my feeble American digestive track probably couldn’t keep up with the daily gastrointestinal assault Indians are accustomed to –but when my kabob’s came back, they weren’t noticeably any different (except being warmer on the outside) and the inside was still room temperature. I just decided not to finish the fish and pecked away at the chicken. Fail, Pind.

Not to be defeated, I decided to go with another dish, especially since I hadn’t had any lunch or breakfast today, just a 2hr workout at the hotel gym. The lamb kabob took a few more minutes to arrive but when it did, it sure smelled wonderful. The masala on the outside was thick, and rich and deep, I loved it. The first bite into a chunk of kabob though, was a letdown. Either Pind cuts corners by purchasing low grade lamb meat, or the carver today really wasn’t up on his game, but each piece of meat was at least 75% fat and cartilage, and barely 10-15% actual muscle meat. It was a huge disappointment. The flavor was good, but I ended up trying very hard to get at any morsels of meat. Luckily, my wife had supplied me with a wonderful book on the history of cryptography to keep me distracted so I enjoyed the meal but I’m not sure I’d recommend this place to anyone in the future.  Bottom line, I left hungry and eyed the nearby KFC for some real food.

All in all, I’d give it a C+:  A for décor, A for Service and D for taste and quantity.