Indian Fans is a decent little lunch shack, but in the end comes off as a restaurant that resulted from someone bringing their vacation home with them.
We all know someone who's gone on vacation and learned to cook Thai food in a Thai cooking school. And here on Yungkang Street, with its bright, tropical color scheme and decorative fabrics and carvings, is the Indian curry equivalent.
The restaurant's offerings are simple, curry set meals and a range of beverages. The owners claim that they grind and then boil the curry themselves, eschewing ready-made pastes and powders. But I say the proof is in the pudding.
PHOTO: DAVID FRAZIER, TAIPEI TIMES
I tried two types of curry, lamb (NT$200 set) -- in which the curry and the meat were fried in with the rice -- and vegetarian (NT$200 set) -- which came as a more standard curry presentation, with the curried vegetables coming in a companion dish to the plate of saffron rice and side vegetables. The lamb was good, but came off more as a tasty lamb fried rice as there was no spiciness and the curry flavor was faint. The vegetarian curry contained delicious vegetables, but the curry was a little too sweet with coconut milk.
The more I thought about it, the more the food seemed to be what could technically be called "fusion" -- cooking that results from the intersection of two cultures, but in the end belongs to neither of them. All of the vegetables in the veggie curry dish can also be tossed into a hot pot, but currying them and pouring them over a fairly authentic mound of saffron rice gives them a completely new identity. The stir-fried curry lamb (and beef) approach suggests a similar analogy, as does the curried fish cheeks set (NT$350).
But before I wander too far off into cultural anthropology, let me mention the beverages, which are probably Indian Fans' greatest strength. It sells strong Indian coffee for NT$60 and Masala milk tea for NT$70. When it gets warmer, it will sell lassi, the favorite Indian yogurt drink, both inside and from a to-go window facing Yungkang Park for a very reasonable NT$60. It should offer good competition to the glut of tea, coffee and bubble tea shops with which it shares a couple of neighborhood blocks.
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