Paris Journal 2013 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Sylvia would
understand, I thought. Sylvia, my
friend who is most like me in terms of love for Indian food, she would
understand how troubling this is. How
is it possible, in a city like Paris, that a really good Indian restaurant
could be empty? We’d dined
twice before at New Aqib a couple years ago, and we liked it. Its presence on the Lafourchette.com web
site reminded me of its existence, and so I made a reservation for last
night. I hoped it was still good; it
all depends on who is in the kitchen, you know. (See my entries for September 22, 2009,
and July 5, 2010.) The fact that
there are over 300 reviews of the restaurant on Lafourchette.com and they
average well over 8 points out of 10 says much. The ratings for New Aqib are very good on
tripadvisor.com, too, but it is possible to load a site like tripadvisor.com
with fake reviews submitted by your 600 best friends. With
Lafourchette.com, you cannot submit a review until you are a member, have
made a reservation at the place, dined there, and the site receives the info
the next day that you really did show up.
That makes it much harder to load the site with fake reviews. We arrived at
7:30PM, taking advantage of a 40 percent discount on food items (not
beverages). Since 7:30 is a little
early for Parisians to dine, I didn’t think much about the fact that we were
the only customers when we arrived. But when we
left after a leisurely, long dinner, somewhere between 8:30 and 9PM, we were
still the only customers! I could not
believe it! The food was wonderful! Sylvia would
agree that I am a picky consumer of Indian food. I don’t hesitate to criticize if I don’t
like it. (I did criticize the onion
baja at New Aqib in 2009, but this time, that dish was perfect.) And I won’t
even walk into a restaurant that doesn’t have sparkling clean windows, an
attractive menu posted in top condition, and a clean and attractive dining
room. Of course these things do not
directly affect the food, but they are excellent indicators of how much the
restaurant cares about the entire dining experience, including the food. We began with
two appetizers: vegetable samossa, and
onion baja. Both were crispy on the
outside, and bursting with hot, moist vegetable flavor on the inside. They were absoloutely delicious, and not
easy to do right -- particularly the
onion baja. We’ve been a little
disappointed in the beignets,
particularly the onion baja, at other places – including our former favorite,
Banani. The new favorite for the the
Indian beignets de legumes for us
is New Aqib. Outstanding! And these
starters were attractively served on an oval platter decorated with flowers
carved from carrots, a fluffy bed of thin strips of cabbage, and a couple
cucumber slices. Lovely presentation. Tom ordered a garlic
nan, and I ordered the house specialty, a cheese nan. Both were served piping hot, right out of
the oven. We ate these with the usual
three chutneys/condiments: one hot and
spicy, one sweet, and one savory. We
consumed all of the hot spicy one, as usual.
This always impresses the servers. I believe this
spicy chutney is made with tamarind, and the one at New Aqib is a little
different in that it includes small chunks of potato. Anyway, this seemed to clearly be homemade
– no chutney out of a jar, no way. For the rice, I
selected the Cashmiri style, with dried fruit bits. I was favorably surprised to see it arrive
at the table with thin slivers of almonds, too. It was fluffy, flavorful and really
fine. Pretty, too. We each ordered
a lamb dish: mine was a Korma, and
Tom’s was the house curry, which is also a creamy sauce. The lamb chunks were tender and delicious,
and the sauces were out of this world.
The restaurant correctly treats Korma as a “sweet” sauce, meaning it
does not come in varying levels of spiciness, like most of the other
sauces. I respect this as the correct
way to make Korma, and I praise the kitchen for doing it right, but then I go
right ahead and add some of that really hot tamarind chutney to it to spice
it up. I’m incorrigible, I know. I like it hot. I had taken the
last of the tamarind chutney out of its little pot and hidden it under my
cheese nan, so that if the server took the chutneys away before the main
course arrived, I’d still be okay. I’d
still have the hot stuff I love. I’d have to
admit to Sylvia that I still think the Korma at the Indian Oven in Columbus
is the best, but it has been so long since I’ve dined there that who knows,
it may be different now. It all
depends on who is in the kitchen. As we were
finishing this fine feast, the very large chef came out of the kitchen to
look around near the entrance. It was
as if he was thinking what we were thinking:
where is everyone? Maybe a mob
arrived just after 9PM. I hope so. The one really
negative review I found on Lafourchette.com was totally unfair. Some customer was incensed that the New
Aqib does not serve Halal
meats. Say what? It is true that India has a sizeable Muslim
population, but most truly Indian restaurants are most heavily influenced by
Hindu culture. That is not so true for
restaurants that are actually Pakistani or Bangladeshi. In those establishments, a customer might
well find that Halal meats are served, and that the cuisine is more
influenced by Islamic culture. The décor of
New Aqib leaves no doubt about its Hindu influence; for example, there are
large, framed pictures of Mahatma Ghandi on the walls. We sat right in front of one of them. Then there are Raj elephants featured in
some of the artwork. Much of the art
depicts scenes from Hindu scriptures and tales. There is no
reason to expect New Aqib to serve Halal meats. And I can find
nothing to criticize about New Aqib except that our table wasn’t big enough
for all the food before us. We should
have insisted on commandeering the table next to us, but we didn’t realize
initially how empty the resto would be. So we managed
to dine on Indian food four times this summer. That’s good, because we have no Indian restaurant
on the island where we live. The
nearest two are about a 45 minute drive from our home, at least, depending on
traffic. Traffic in peak season can be
quite thick and slow. Paris is the place
for us to fulfill our cravings for delightful Indian food, in addition to
fine French cuisine. We’re grateful to
New Aqib for making this summer’s Indian experience memorable. We’ll be back. “Live as if you
were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Ghandi |
Monday, September 23, 2013
New Aqib restaurant, 47 rue Monsieur le Prince.
Mahatma Ghandi’s portrait
over our table. Interestingly, the pastor
of my church, John Danner, looks somewhat like Ghandi
(Ben Kingsley, too).
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