Curry

New York

On my previous visits here I'd never made it off Manhattan so I'm going to try to get round all the boroughs this time. Last night I started off by going to Queens and the Jackson Heights area where the Indian population is based. Getting off the subway and walking around the few blocks nearby was like being back home with lots of late-night shops selling everything and guys on the street trying to get you to go into their restaurant.

Feeling hungry I decided to sacrifice quality for quantity and went to a place (inevitably called the "Taj Mahal") with an all you can eat buffet. It was so cheap the large Kingfisher I had cost almost as much as the food. After a couple of dodgy plates (including a pisspoor goat curry) I finally hit paydirt with the tawa chicken, although like the rest of the food it was a bit bland even for my British palate. New Yorkers obviously aren't used to the spicy stuff. In fact the only really spicy thing they had were the vegetable samosas, and a few of them made the beer taste all the better.