The Restaurant I Ate at Last Night XV
Upon my return from the CoF Roadshow every year, I reassess several aspects of my life. How I spend my time, who I spend it with, how I live my life habit-wise, etc. Not everything gets changed or improved, but this year, my little self-improvement kick includes reconsidering how I eat. How often I cook at home. Whether I eat breakfast. What I do for lunch at work. Last night, I decided that I've fallen into a restaurant rut. When I eat out, there are maybe two or three places that I frequent. At one of them, I order the exact same thing every single time I visit. This, I must change. There are a lot of restaurants in Boston. There are a lot of restaurants in my neighborhood. And I've never been to most of them.

So last night, I went somewhere new, to read John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up and to eat dinner before meeting Andrea for a drink later in the evening. The restaurant I picked? Well, it kind of picked me because India Pavilion was crowded and I'm not too comfortable eating and reading by myself in crowded restaurants. So I walked a couple of blocks to the Gandhi Restaurant instead.

The service at the Gandhi is extremely friendly and inobtrusive, and my waiter said "please" every time he came by the table. I liked that. The food? Rather average but passable Indian cuisine. I started with a lentil soup that was relatively free of lentils, and which had a slightly acrid tartness to it. Still, tasty and warm, perfect for a windy autumn evening. The aloo channa masala was a highlight, and it's good to see people adding other ingredients to the chickpea standby. That rested on a bed of aromatic jasmine rice. The garlic nan wasn't much to speak of -- I prefer my nan fixings to be cooked inside the nan rather than just peppered on the outside, and I missed the availability of aloo nan, my favorite -- but the papadam was crispy and good. I washed everything down with a mango juice and some water before moving onto dessert. Dessert was good. Gulab jamun is similar to warm donut holes in a sugar and rose water syrup -- also a highlight of the meal. But the coffee? Weak.

So Gandhi gets mixed reviews. Not too expensive, but not too impressive. I doubt I'll return until I'm able to compare it to the other Indian restaurants on Central Square.