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| - I have to admit I am a Food Network fan so when I saw Rachel Ray review Origin India so highly I got the idea to treat my wife to a nice dinner a bit out of our usual price range. She loves Indian food and it was her B-day so we splurged.
I made online reservations but they were not needed at all, the place was all but empty. We had to wait while the manager interviewed a prospective employee but that turned out bad, voices were raised and we were caught in the middle. Oh well.
The ambiance was nice, the lighting was low but not like dining in the dark like some places I have gone. As we were seated we were given the wine and drink menu and the dinner menus. A quick note: the menus were dirty and stained from drinks or whatever. This was immediately off-putting because in a place with as high a Zagat Rating of 26/21/21 I would have expected more. OK, maybe I expect too much.
So, the option, bottled or LV tap for water. Let me say up front, I am not paying $8.00 for a bottle of Pellegrino (price not listed, so I am assuming) that is $2.00 in the store. Local is fine thank you. Am I cheap? No, I am in this restaurant, but I am thrifty, no need to be hosed. Then it took 5 minutes just for water to be served and another 10 minutes for Iced Tea. The tea was a black tea, refreshing, but not unusually so.
I think the staff had to be bored as we had like three different waiters. I was not certain who was serving what and that felt a little odd. We went on to order the Raisin and Apricot Naan which was delicious and an appetizer of Chicken Tikka that was very good. I am not sure it was actually Chicken Tikka, it was not spicy at all except for what looked and tasted like spice grape leaves holding the appetizer to the plate, but it was good.
The entree for me was a Moulard duck leg confit coated in ginger, garlic, cinnamon, honey and orange zest, served with butter poached potato and sweet and sour kumquat marmalade and my wife had Southern Indian style diced lamb stir fry diced lamb stir fry with curry leaves, black mustard seeds, whole Kashmiri chilli and coconut, served with lemon rice. Here is where Origin India shined. Both plates were wonderful to look at and the taste was marvelous. They have earned the 26 Zagat Food Rating (should be 27 in my book).
For dessert we tried the "Indian Donut Holes" and while tasty, a bit of a disappointment. Oh well.
The atmosphere was disturbed while we were there by a guy yelling into his cell phone. If I had my way cell phones would be discouraged in a fine dining establishment, they are so annoying. But management just let this guy yammer away even when they saw the dirty looks we and others in the restaurant were giving him.
In all our dining experience was about two hours and that was expected. I have to admit that although the food was superb, they overall experience lacked polish that for the prices charged I would have expected. They attempted to provide a high dining atmosphere but fell short on the details like not replacing silver in a timely manner and by letting drinks to be emptied before refilling. I did not expect the classic "crumbing the table" but the little things seemed to add up.
If the prices were a little more reasonable for the experience I would be a frequent diner, but the tab was a bit too steep to make it a regular thing.
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