At least in Hong Kong, mention having dinner, or, especially, lunch in an Indian restaurant to your Chinese friends, and many look as if they’ve swallowed a birdie num num.
The reason has to do with the fact that most Indian restaurants serve South Indian curries- and many are not good at this, which often means bits of meat floating in gravy made up of oil and dollops of ghee.
Inhale a lunch or dinner of this stuff and it makes you feel like a beached whale.
Though the Indian lunch buffet at the Conrad Lobby Lounge is a good one, it still leaves you feeling stuffed and with a basketball where your stomach used to be.
This feeling and the smell of breathing curried fumes and onions from the various sambals is why many locals decline those invitations for an Indian lunch.
And then there is Guru in Lower Elgin Street which is an Indian Restaurant- but not really- as it’s Indian cuisine without the ghee, without meats and everything else swimming in pools of oil and served in an atmosphere that, no matter how they might try, many of these restaurants remind one of slumming in some hole in the wall at Chungking Mansions.
One feels “safe” at Guru where there’s a “clean”, comfortable atmosphere, family-type service- ask owner Mr Karki to do the ordering- and dishes that are from Northern part of India like the spicy- and delicious- Lamb Kebabs, the Tandoori Prawns and Chicken, the Spicy Potato- I’ve been happy just having this dish- the extremely pleasant Yellow Chicken Curry, the various spinach dishes, the Pineapple Rice, and when one can say that even the samosas, naan breads and papadums are the best in town, Guru must be doing something right.
Guru IS doing more than something right- leave room for or return for their Mongolian Dumplings and Spicy Mongolian Chicken, below, which is why it’s probably the only “Indian” restaurant we know that attracts the most finicky customers we know: Jockeys- those who ride horses- and need to eat healthy and wisely and are EXTREMELY careful about where they dine on those days when they’re not worrying about keeping their weight down for a race day.
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