Restaurant Review: Pind Balluchi
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.
N
ow 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 4th 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.
