restaurant review

Good Indian restaurants in Prague

Last summer in Prague I tested how Indian paneer cheese bends in Czech and tried four different Indian restaurants, even though the first one made me hesitate. However, vegetarian food was so rare over there that the Indian restaurants brought considerable relief. Here are 3 good Indian restaurants I found from Prague.

Golden Tikka

The Golden Tikka restaurant was located in a modest-looking residential area in Prague and one had to pass quite a few beer terraces on the way there. The entrance to the restaurant was quite unobtrusive and easily lost.

Golden Tikka was decorated in a modest and neat manner that fits the suburban area, and a few paintings delighted the customer on the orangish yellow walls.

The menu of the restaurant, in turn, delighted the customer with a rare restaurant option, chapati, which is a healthier alternative to naan bread.

Mangolassi was not found in the menu, so ordinary lassi, with a bit of salt, was there to extinguish the spices.

At the Golden Tikka restaurant I got to see for the first time papad breads rolled-up. Those were served as starters. However, the curvy look of the papad did not matter and the taste was ok.

Butter chicken, Golden Tikka restaurant, Prague

Both roti bread and naan bread were available at the Golden Tikka restaurant

The chicken and vegetable dishes at the Golden Tikka restaurant were excellent and well-seasoned. As a bonus one was able to enjoy them with the roti breads, as if one was eating at home, and because of this I did go to eat to this restaurant even for the second time during my trip to Prague. Having this kind of restaurant right around the corner one can consider herself really fortunate.

**** ½ star for food in Golden Tikka restaurant, *** for decoration

Indian Jewel

Another Indian restaurant I visited in Prague was called Indian Jewel. The moment I saw the almost full outdoor terrace of the restaurant, I thought I’m going to get some good food, and I wasn’t wrong.

The restaurant’s orange painted walls displayed Indian wood carvings, average quality paintings, and colorful sunshades and sheets familiar from Indian markets.

Kadhai Paneer, in the Indian restaurant Indian Jewel — Kadhai Paneer

Restaurant Indian Jewel outdoor terrace, Prague

Water and mangolassi were served in copper cups, which was new to me, and kadhai chicken and kadhai paneer were also served in similar beautiful copper dishes.

The food in the restaurant was routine tasty and filling with naan bread and rice, and to have the meal inside a quiet restaurant, when almost all other restaurant guests were sitting outside in the summer evening, was nice.

*** ½ star for Indian Jewel restaurant food and *** for decoration

Bombay Express

A surprise in the Indian restaurant world in Prague was the Bombay Express fast food restaurant, which I found in a mall next to the famous sight of Franz Kafka statue.

The Bombay Express’s Paneer wrap was a refreshing novelty for me. In simple terms, it was a rolled naan bread containing paneer cheese together with spicy sauce. It was sinfully good, almost addictive and embarrassingly easy to carry away. And yes, I did enjoy their paneer wraps on more than one occasion during my trip to Prague. The nearby moving Kafka sculpture became quite familiar to me. But more about that later.

Bombay Express Indian fast food restaurant in a Czech mall

Bombay Express Paneer wrap was served in a heat-resistant package

The Bombay Express restaurant also served other take-away portions, such as Samosa with chole, which included small chunks of chickpeas, tomato onion salad and spicy sauces.

Paneer wrap was not aesthetically much, but so convenient to eat without hands getting dirty. I really hope that the delicious Paneer wrap finds its way to Finland and Helsinki, as it offers a perfect match for them Mc Donald’s and Hesburger hamburgers.

***** stars for Bombay Express restaurant food, ** for interior design

This is how Indian food in Prague and the Czech Republic was. Read more about Indian restaurants around the world in the INDIVUE blogs and find authentic experiences with guiding photos.

Read also INDIVUE – Trip to Europe and find this article with more photos in Finnish!

Best café of the past decade in South Goa

The year 2019 came to its end and now it is time to pick the best café of the past decade in South Goa. Not counting the beach restaurants makes it a bit easier thing to do.

German Bakery products such as lemon cake, chocolate walnut cake, honey peanut cake, cheesecake, carrot cake, croissant and vegetable pastry

The winner is a small cafe in Benaulim called German Bakery, which has existed for as long as I can remember. A restaurant with the same name and a bigger size has also operated in North Goa at least one decade ago, but this article tells about that small cafe in the village of Benaulim in South Goa.

German Bakery is a great place to go if you need change for the Indian masalas and Goan bebincas, as you will find Western cakes, buns, breads and pastries over there.

That modest café German Bakery has four tables and chairs alongside Benaulim’s grocery store, and the tables are almost always full. Still, one can always find room, at least after a little waiting. A grocery store is located on the other side of the café and a pharmacy in the other side.

German Bakery has clients for every occasion, but most often you hear English and Hindi spoken. The cafe is about 700m from the Benaulim beach and approximately the same distance from the main road and Maria Hall, which is a well known building in that region.

The baked products are manufactured elsewhere, and they are not spoiled with price and neither will they spoil the tourist’s stomach, if moderately eaten. In the café itself they make tasty vegetable sandwiches, ginger-lemon-honey tea, omelette and juice made of freshly squeezed fruits, among others.

Their customer service is good and it is amazing, how they cope with their friendly customer service with smile in their face day in day out, regardless of the weather. They must be really doing what they like to do.

Even though the café is modest in appearance, the level of hygiene is mostly good, considering that there is constant traffic around with passing cars, scooters, cows and dogs.

The endless stream of tourists and locals will keep the viewer, the café customer, interested, and no television or even a friend is necessarily needed.

Occasionally, an exciting addition to the customer is brought by sudden power outages, which, without a warning, darken the environment for a moment until the lights come up with the backup generators in the near-by shop. Little bit later, the electricity in the whole village starts working again.

Although gluten-free products were already available in Goa‘s local stores one year back, German Bakery had not yet invested in them, at least in January 2019. However, for a gluten-free diet, there was tea and coffee, fruit juices and omelettes available in the café.

My absolute favorite in the German Bakery was their ginger-lemon-honey tea, and I recommend you to try it, though I’m still not sure if honey should be mixed with hot water or not. But it tastes good anyway.

Couple of walls by the German Bakery served also as bulletin boards promoting eg. local concerts, yoga classes and more. INDIVUE has also been seen there.

INDIVUE chose German Bakery as the best cafe of the past decade in South Goa

If you’re planning to travel to Goa, check out the travel guide in the link!

Find this article in Finnish here

Good Indian restaurant in the Tripla shopping mall in Helsinki

An excellent Indian restaurant Deli Rasoi has been opened in the new Tripla shopping center.

The restaurant is located on the fourth floor of the mall, a little off the beaten track, but easy to find with the mall’s signpost.

The smaller entrance leads to a large dining room with even larger view from the windows up to the the Hartwall Arena and the starry sky.

I went to Deli Rasoi restaurant one Sunday evening, when there were not many customers even in the Tripla Shopping Center itself. The atmosphere in the restaurant was comfortably peaceful.

The restaurant’s menu included starters such as pakoras and samosas, tandoor ovens delicacies such as Chicken and Paneer Tikka, and fish dishes included eg. Fish Madras and Fish Tikka and vegetarian dishes were among others Aloo Gobhi, Dal Makhani, Palak Paneer and Malai Kofta.

Most foods were also labeled with G and L, ie lactose-free and gluten-free, and all the dishes included rice and naan bread, and the price was according to that.

In addition they had vegetable thali and meat thali with three servings and they came with naan bread, rice, raita, salad and dessert.

I chose Deli Rasoi Kadhai Paneer for myself, which included fresh cottage cheese pieces in a tomato sauce seasoned with bell peppers, onion, cumin seeds and coriander.

The portion was brought to the table within a reasonable time, and it had large chilli pieces which immediately brought water to the tongue. The chilis in Kadhai Paneer were no decorations – the dose was nice and spicy – just the kind of I’ve eaten for example in Delhi, India. However, not so hot that one has to leave the dose on the plate, as in Jaipur.

Naan bread was also delicious and so was rice. The mango lassi was having a bit too much of a yogurt taste, but on the whole Deli Rasoi Kadhai Paneer was a very fine meal.

My companion had Shahi Paneer, which surprised me with its light color and mild taste, but that’s how it has always been in Finland, that Shahi Paneer is the safe option.

The restaurant Deli Rasoi decoration was modestly stylish and it reminded one about India only with the menu and the welcoming message written on the wall in Hindi. If there is something to be improved, it is the amount of light which could perhaps be slightly increased, unless the intension was to be with mere ambient light at the night time.

Restaurant Deli Rasoi in the Tripla Mall

If you ask me, would I go to eat in the Deli Rasoi in Tripla Shopping Mall again, the answer is yes, and preferably on a warm summer evening, when the restaurant will hopefully have outdoor tables for admiring the starry sky and the Pasila train tracks.

Read more restaurant reviews here and otherwise my e-book Journey to India will tell you more about India itself.

Golden Tikka

Indian Jewel

Bombay Express

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