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We tried Taste of China near ACAC in Albemarle Square a few weeks back and really loved the food. We made a second trip this weekend and the food was awesome again.

I ate the Tofu Casserole Sichuan Spicy (left) and Parchayi ate the Spicy Scallions and Chili hotpot (or something like that, right).

Both dishes were fantastic. Taste of China is not a regular American Chinese restaurant (though they do serve up some American Chinese too). This according to them is the real Chinese food. Why O why then are we subject to the same old Chinese food everywhere?

I would call taste of China expensive for a Chinese place but then they don’t serve the tired old Chinese and the portions are generous. The food is closer to Indian Chinese than American Chinese.

Here is a link to the Vegetarian Options on the Menu, and for a good laugh see the last item. I wasn’t brave enough to try it. Maybe you are

Charlottesville now has a new Indian store on Westfield Rd. near the Comcast office called Taste of India.

We’ve been to the new store twice and as compared to Indian Bazaar on Rio, the store is more neatly organized. There are more Frozen options and most of the basics are the same. The store owner has promised to order some stuff that he didn’t have and I’ll find out soon if he did. I’m not sure we really needed another store but if he does deliver on his promise of ordering stuff that the other one doesn’t carry we might end up going there more often.

We tried the new Tara Thai at Barracks Rd this weekend and were completely disappointed with the food. The soup we ordered was lukewarm (not even close to hot). When we complained, they heated it up for us in a microwave for a few minutes. After that it was ok and decent tasting.

The food we ordered was all cold too. We could hear them cooking it and we were sitting about 10 feet from the kitchen so it can’t have become cold in transit. Maybe they just stir fry stuff and dump in cold readymade sauce? and maybe they don’t stir fry long enough for the vegetables to become hot? After complaining again and being served microwave heated food, the temperature was ok. Still not hot but tolerable. Even the fried Tofu was cold. I’ve never had fried tofu cold in a dish before. Taste wise the food was mediocre and the dish I ordered was overly fishy. I threw away the leftovers because when I heated them up later at home they smelled bad. All in all a bad experience. I’ll stick with Thai 99 on JPA and Lemongrass at the corner for good Thai food.

We were in DC last weekend for our skin test (got an RFE from USCIS for that – even though we had submitted negative xrays last time and we are known positives for the skin test) and ate at Wah Taj, which is the complex neigboring the one with Minerva and Curry N Kabob.

The Indian Chinese at Wah Taj was fantastic – the Chili Paneer was exellent and reminded me of Bombay and the rest of the chinese food was really good to. We also got takeout Indian from there and that was also good but not really spectacular.

The next day we ate at Hot Breads in NoVA, which was a disappointment after the excellent experience with Hot Breads in Richmond the previous weekend. The NoVA one didn’t have much of a menu, no dosas, no Indian Pizzas, just a few sandwiches and Pav Bhaji. The Pav Bhaji was just ok, the sandwiches were also just ok. The Richmond Hot Breads dosas were good and Pizza was also nice.

An update on Curry N Kabob, our old favorite in Herndon from a friend who lives close by – he stopped going there because he once found a cockroach in his food. Yikes! It still tastes as good though but eat at your own risk.

On Sunday as a change from spicy Indian food we went to a brunch place called “Waffle King’s Virginia Kitchen” and I have to say I have never eaten such bad waffles. My waffle was chewy and leathery – I would rather eat a Frozen toaster waffle than this again. I though it might just be mine but everyone elses waffles were the same. The only good thing here was the fresh sqeezed orange juice.

You all know what I think of Indian Restaurants in Charlottesville but since Milan has a new chef from when we last visited, we thought we’d give the place another try and to summarize the experience – nothing has changed.

We went for the lunch buffet on a saturday. Only one dish amongst all the vegetarian food stood out – an eggplant dish, which too I would call good – nothing exceptional. The rest were mediocre curries. Even Chana (chick peas), which is really hard to get wrong was just ok. I can’t say about the chicken, but Parchayi definitely is not visiting the place again for a long time.

All in all, I’d say stick with Just Curry, which now has two locations, in place of Mesob at the Corner and on The Downtown mall.

I heard a few days back that Casella’s at Barracks Rd is being replaced by a new Thai place. Will report on that when it opens. My favorites still are Lemongrass and Thai 99. I’ve tried several times to try to get the chef at Lemongrass to tell us what goes in his Spicy Lemongrass Tofu, but he is tight lipped about it and the only clues he will give us is that it is a Thai-Vietnamese combination dish which has an Indian influence. I’m willing to offer a free 20$ gift certificate or 20$ by paypal if you can reverse engineer that dish for us.

I’ve noticed that most flavored yogurts in grocery sotes have gelatin in them. Now there is no particular reason Yogurt needs gelatin. I would venture to guess that gelatin is cheaper than yogurt and is a tasteless filler material that probably saves companies money and makes the consistency arguably better. However personally, I see no particular consistency difference in yogurts with and without gelatin so I say it is all a gimmick to save money and also cheat customers into paying more for so called “All Natural” products which have fewer nasty ingredients. Dannon is one major national brand which does this – try to sell you a more expensive “All Natural” yogurt.

Proof that gelatin is more of a filler than for consistency comes from the fact that even yogurt drinks such as Danimals contain gelatin. Even expensive ones such as La Crème contain gelatin! I examined the possibility that gelatin could increase the nutrition of yogurts because of the high amount of protein, however gelatin causes a net loss of protein.

Note to vegetarians – almost all gelatin in food products comes from animals (e.g. Dannon’s comes from cattle hide). There are many brands of yogurt that contain no gelatin especially organic brands and yogurt marked “all natural”.

Some brands that I know of are Stonyfield Farm, Brown Cow (their cream top yogurts are my new favorite), Horizon, Dannon All Natural only, Harris Teeter store brand. If you know of others, please comment and I’ll add to this list.

Parchayi and me were both excited to hear that Masala Wok, an Indian Chinese chain opened up in Herndon. We’ve been missing Indian Chinese food anywhere close by and last weekend while we visited a friend in Northern VA, we paid a visit to Masala Wok.

I ordered the Masala Wok Spicy (description – Paneer stir fried in a zesty szechuan sauce), which turned out to be a shocking pink strange looking curry with Paneer and a mismatched collection of vegetables not even close to the szechuan sauce that we are accustomed to as Indian Chinese. Once I overcame the gross misuse of food coloring, I tried it and it was really bad. So I can’t recommend this dish at all.

Parchayi ordered the Ginger Masala – Chicken seasoned with spices cooked in ginger sauce – which looked better and tasted slightly better than mine but I would call it mediocre at best.

Our friend ordered the Biryani and that was average according to him. He recommends visiting Curry N Kabob for the best Biryani in the DC area and I have to agree. Curry N Kabob has fantastic food.

To the owners of Masala Wok, may I recommend a visit to Seattle to try out Inchin’s Bamboo Garden in Redmond to eat some real Indian Chinese.

Indian restaurant owners in cville, if you are not prepared for some embarrassment, stop reading.

Just to be fair, All this applies only to the buffet’s at Indian restaurants. I’ve not tried ordering off the menu at any and don’t plan to unless I get some nice coupons.

Let me start with some history. Of the Indian restaurants that existed when I moved to cville, only Maharaja is still standing and the food at Maharaja was mediocre at best. After a while, Milan opened and the food there was also mediocre but most liked it more probably because it was slightly different from Maharaja. Later Maharaja’s chef took over Maharaja but I’ve not been to it after then because I wasn’t too pleased with the food anyway. Milan’s chef left Milan and started a new place called Royal Indian just north of Target and I tried the buffet there. All the food was mostly tasteless pasty creamy goo so I will not recommend it at all. I’ve not tried Milan’s new chef but I’ve heard reports the the food has not changed at all.

So considering this, where do you get the best Indian food in Charlottesville? The answer is Just Curry at the corner. They are Carribean style curries but that’s just nice Indian food. There are not many options to select from but the food is really tasty, unlike the bland pastes at lunch buffets at the Indian restaurants.

I actually asked the chef at Royal Indian why the food was so bland and his reply was that it is for the American palette. If that’s the case, I wonder, why is it that Just Curry is full of Americans and Royal Indian is always empty? Indian restaurants, please give us some decent spicy food! Give us some Indian Chinese and stop making us drive to DC for the good stuff.

For several years now, we’ve been addicted to Sabra Hummus. Our favorite is the Supremely Spicy but all the others are great too. No other Hummus even comes close. Over the last few months other brands have also started making their own creamy style hummus but none of these come close to the Sabra either.

Generally we consume Hummus with Pita chips and so far the best ones we’ve found are Regenie’s Parmesan Garlic Chips. In fact, these are so good that we’ve got a lot of friends addicted too. The local Sams Club must be wondering how the sales of these things skyrocketed in the last few years. The Amazon link is to a 12 pack of chips and is expensive. I recommend that you go to your local Sams Club or Costco to buy these.

Recently I noticed some interesting flavored chips from Archer Farms (Target in-house brand) at Target. From a distance I saw ‘Jamican Jerk’, ‘Curry’ and ‘Schezwan BBQ’ only to go closer and find that they are baked. I decided to give them a shot anyway and I can say that the Jamican and the Curry are excellent. The curry actually tastes like the Indian Maggi noodles Curry flavor. Unfortunately I just cant find a picture of these things online and I’m too lazy to go click one now.

For a change, the not so bad for you version of something is this good. I highly recommend these