On Saturday, sick-to-death of the hotel food, we (or I) decided we needed to venture out and try something new. Unfortunately, my timing for venturing out is never good, as my claustrophobia always peaks a little after lunch, corresponding to the hottest time of the day. P, always the supportive one, gripes a bit about the heat, and then carries on like a trooper, sensing my impending hysterical breakdown. So, growling stomachs and sweating, we head out towards Hamdan Street and Anand's Vegetarian Indian Restaurant (or was it Anand's Indian Vegetarian Restaurant....??).
Earlier on in our explorations, we had passed Anand's (although at the time, we didn't really take notice of the restaurant's name) and peeking inside, we found it was packed with Indians (always a good sign when the locals of a particular cuisine are willing to pay up for the food). It smelled good, and had it not been late and had I not had enough of the heat and Hamdan Street, we probably would have stopped in for a bite. Later, while reading the October issue of Time-Out Abu Dhabi (an excellent magazine for foreigners like ourselves), P discovered a restaurant review section, where they listed Anand's Vegetarian Indian Restaurant, as a good place to visit. As we head out on Saturday, we were hoping the two restaurants were indeed one and the same. We were so happy to see the S-D-N-A-N-A (in that order) on the sign.
The decor at Anand's is very simple: tables, chairs, and what appear to be bathroom stalls (with those wooden doors that they used to have in all the saloons in the Wild West) but are really just sinks with soap (hand-washing...good sign). We were seated immediately in the VIP section (or I like to think of it that way) in the back room. There were no menus on the table, and the white boards just listed 8-10 items. Confused, I got up to try and find someone to help out...but it was very difficult to tell the difference between the wait-staff, and the people who were waiting for staff, so, I head back to our table. Shortly thereafter, the very friendly fellow who seated us, showed up at our table with 3 thalis (pronounced 'tah-lees'), or round steel trays, filled with three little bowls of dahls and soups, puris and the always gourmet Indian salad (of cucumbers, carrots and cabbage). P declined his thali, saying he was not hungry (and seriously...we were already taking a risk in eating there...we had no idea what the food tasted like and had purposely chosen a lunch meal in the case there were some...er...repercussions). We clarified the price of the thali: 12 AED (about $3 Cdn), and were very happy to discover that the meal was 'unlimited portions' (although our server pointedly told P there was 'no sharing' allowed....don't think that stopped P from sampling most of my food). Very quickly, I could see that P was regretting his decision not to buy a thali, as our server and others came around repeatedly with more dahl, more soup, more puris...basically a refill of everything on our plate.
I could tell that our server was slightly disappointed that I didn't eat more. He kept reminding me that I could eat as much as I wanted to, and quite honestly, I did. I do not like ludoos (and so I only tasted it to get a sense of the flavour). I had my papadam (just like the ones my mom makes...and probably comes from the same packaging too), the dahl and 6 puris (they were very small...kind of like loonie pancakes). I gave A some of the salad (I'd like to see the guy that tries to prevent a mom from sharing food with her baby), and she was fairly occupied throughout the lunch experience.
All in all, it was good Indian food (although nothing like my mom's food...I'm telling you mom, 'The Sleeping Indian' restaurant would rake in some major dirhams over here). And, the best part...it all settled nicely, with no 'second acts'.
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