Author Archives: hungrywoolf

Reethika

Posted on December 27, 2010 | 9 comments

reethika indian restaurant columbus ohio
Reethika
Cuisine – Indian (Hyderabadi)
Federated Blvd., just east of Sawmill
614.659.0889
http://reethikacolumbus.com/

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Reethika (pronunciation – think ‘Ithaca’ with an ‘R’ in front) perhaps isn’t quite as flashy as some of the other new Indian restaurants in Columbus, but their Hyderabadi home-style food is very noteworthy and the welcome is warm. They opened quietly at the end of November but the location, between the two large Indian markets on Sawmill, guaranteed they wouldn’t go unnoticed for long.

Reethika indian restaurant columbus ohio
The friendly owners are Mr and Mrs Reddy, and Reethika is named after their daughter who also works in the restaurant. They family hails from Hyderabad, a large city in Southern India.

Reethika Indian restaurant columbus
Reethika offers an $8.99 buffet for lunch, which is comprised of more interesting dishes than we’re conditioned to expect. Buffet items change daily, though all come with an order of fresh (and excellent) chapatti.  A separate section of the buffet contains chutneys, raita and dessert. The chutneys are exceptional and are obviously freshly made.

sheek kebab at reethika columbus
Dinners have been equally good, and many of our favorite dishes so far have been the appetizers. The seekh kebab was a standout, extremely flavorful and well seasoned; the tandoori chicken wings (unusually and deliciously deep-fried), Manchurian cauliflower and the mirchi pakoda, green chilis deep fried in a crunchy spicy gram flour batter. Pakoda is an alternative spelling of pakora. The palak pakoda was extremely light and crisp.

indian food in columbus ohio

Of the entrees the green chicken curry is notable. A complex mix of spices and herbs, hard to pin down but vibrant in color and flavor.

The mutter paneer (fresh homemade cheese cubes cooked with peas) was well above average and the paneer was nicely browned. Reethika caters well for vegetarians with five vegetarian appetizers and nine vegetarian entrees.

They have plans to offer idli and dosa at the weekends and there are often daily specials.

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Panaderia Guadalupana

Posted on August 14, 2010 | 9 comments

Cuisine: Mexican

1977 E Dublin Granville Road (161)
614.547.7117

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Panaderia Guadalupana opened days before we were finalizing the itinerary for our Columbus Food Adventures alt.eats tour and, mercifully, became the answer to the question of how and where to end the tour on a sweet note. We have long enjoyed the Mexican bakeries on the west side (Otro Rollo and Oaxaquena) but this is the first independent Mexican bakery we have found on the North side of town. It’s a really good one.

Colorful cookies and cakes such as tres leches and chocoflan (vanilla egg custard baked on top of chocolate cake) are found in a refrigerated case on the right hand side as you enter. Breads and pastries are in an alcove at the back of the store.

Panaderia Guadalupana has a huge variety of recipes they rotate among, and on any given day there will be around 25-30 bread and pastry options to choose from. The most popular breads (pan dulce, conchas, bolillos) are ever present but the flavors of the empanadas and pastries vary daily. Prices for most of the breads and pastries range from about $.85 to $1.10. Everything is very fresh and the texture is light and airy. Grab a pair of tongs, a tray and make your selection. Then take it up to the counter to be bagged.

One of our recent finds was this jalapeno, cream cheese and turkey roll which was almost a meal in itself.

Panaderia Guadalupana has a big space with lots of windows, seating, wifi and even a couch area. What they don’t have at the moment is any coffee. Once they do, I think this will be a popular spot for people to hang out and work. At the moment it’s a great place to pick up some excellent baked goods, freshly baked each day.

The cinnamon roll is a hungrywoolf favorite. You can see a few shots of Panaderia Guadalupana and their food in this video.

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Posted in Bakery, Mexican

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Cafe Kabul

Posted on July 5, 2010 | 8 comments

Cuisine: Afghan

2831 Olentangy River Road
Mon-Thurs, 11am – 10pm, Fri-Sat, 11am – 10:30pm, Sun, 12pm – 10pm

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Located in a light, bright space at the southern end of the strip known as ‘University City Center’, Cafe Kabul is, to the best of our knowledge, the first and only Afghan restaurant in Columbus. Open only for a few weeks as of this writing, at lunchtime it was already drawing a decent number of students and office workers from the surrounding area. It is a casual, order-at-the-counter setup, and customers are given a number to be called when their food is ready.

We started with one of the side dishes – buranee bonjon – a bed of sauteed slices of eggplant topped with homemade yogurt, tomato sauce and served with Afghan bread. The yogurt (which can also be ordered separately) was very tangy and the tomato added a little, but not too much sweetness. Pile a bit of each on some bread, and you’ll have a taste of what made this one of our group’s favorite dishes.  The bread, which I think was obi non, is thicker than pita bread and useful for scooping up yogurt and hummus.

We also tried two of the other vegetable side dishes – sabsi (pureed spinach cooked with onions and garlic) and the sauteed okra with tomatoes and onions. Both were simple dishes that were (surprisingly) mildly seasoned, seemingly with the intent of letting the fresh flavors of the vegetables shine through.  It works, in an ‘if you like spinach, you’ll like sabsi‘ manner of thinking.

The majority of the mains are dishes are familiar from Middle Eastern or Indian cuisines: seekh kebab, tandoor chicken, chicken kabob and tikka kabob. We ordered one chicken seekh kebab – spiced ground chicken formed around a skewer and grilled – with the idea of comparing it to other seekh kebabs found around town.  While it seemed a reasonable effort, others in town do it better.

The more interesting mains were kabuli pallow and peshawari chaplee kabob. The peshawari chaplee kabob (more commonly chapli) consisted of three meat patties made of ground beef mixed with freshly ground spices and grilled to well-done.  The intriguingly complex flavors of this dish were roundly appreciated, though the meat was a bit on the dry side for our tastes. As with most of the main dishes, it can be served either with rice and salad or with bread and salad. The included mint chutney was a worthy accompaniment.

The kabuli pallow (palao) is a variation on one of Afghanistan’s national dishes – Afghan style rice topped with chunks of lamb, spiced sauteed carrot strips and raisins. This dish was popular – their lamb was a thing of beauty – but at $9.49, it struck us as though there wasn’t very much of it.

Although there are no vegetarian main dishes on the menu, vegetarians could find enough to eat from a selection of the sides and appetizers. Service was leisurely but acceptable.

Having done some research on Afghan cuisine, it seems that Cafe Kabul is merely scratching the surface of the range of dishes. It’s a great addition to the University City Center but may not worth a drive across town. I hope that Cafe Kabul will offer more variety as they get established and that we will see more Afghan restaurants opening in Columbus.

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Apna Bazaar

Posted on May 27, 2010 | 13 comments

Cuisine: Pakistani/Indian

810 Bethel Road
614.326.2762
www.apnabazaar.biz

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After our experiences at Luc’s, Mecca, and Arirang, we’ve come to believe that some of the best international cuisine in town is put out by pint-sized kitchens shoehorned into the corners of out-of-the-way ethnic groceries.  As such, when we were told about another grocer/kitchen combo out on Bethel Rd. (thanks, Amar), we were primed to expect the best… and we are happy to say that we weren’t let down.

Apna is located in a fun (from an alt.eats perspective) little strip mall across the street from Microcenter that is also home to Banana Leaf, a Korean restaurant, a Thai/ Vietnamese restaurant, a Mexican grocery store, and a bubble tea shop.  While Apna’s primary focus seems to be on take-out and catering, they’re also happy to serve you at a table in the back of the store that seats up to 8 people.

Apna Bazaar’s kitchen specializes in tandoori and karhai preparations.  The photo above is the tandoor oven, which we were allowed into the kitchen to admire. Another shot in the kitchen (below): making chicken samosas.

We started with tandoori boneless chicken (you can also get a leg and thigh or a whole chicken), served straight from the tandoor. Garnished with onion, lime, and with a relatively mild sauce on the side, this dish was a little spicy, far more tender than most tandooris we’ve had, and very very popular. It was altogether too quickly devoured.

Luckily for our hungry group of 8, the food kept coming. We sampled (below, clockwise from top left) chicken karhai, beef nihari, goat qorma and chicken kabab karhai.

The word karhai (or karahi) refers to both a traditional wok-like Indian/Pakistani cooking dish, and a cooking method that uses this dish. Apna offers chicken (whole or half), goat, and kabab karhai preparations. We tried the (bone on) chicken karhai – fragrant with ginger, this was one of the more mildly spiced dishes we tried – and the kabab karhai, a generous quantity of heavily spiced ground chicken shish kababs, chopped up and sauteed with onions and tomatoes.  Both were enjoyed by all, with the nod going to the kabab version.

The nihari was another crowd pleaser, a delicious rich stew of tender beef shanks cooked overnight.  Apparently a popular breakfast dish in Pakistan, Apna’s nihari was deeply flavored with cloves, cumin, ginger and cardamon, and had a heat that came on slowly and peaked impressively.

The qorma (korma) consisted of tender goat served in a sauce whose richness was similar to the nihari, but was distinctly different in flavor with plenty of cardamon and a lot of chili. Among a table full of spicy-hot foods, it was the hottest of the dishes that we tried.

The meal was accompanied by seemingly endless piles of naan bread. Apna’s naan is different than most, and is considered by our Indian friends to be more authentic – made with whole meal flour, it was lighter, crisper, less doughy and served without any butter or ghee.

Apna Bazaar also has a selection of Indian sweets including gulab jaman, laddo and halwa, but as we were too full, we managed only a cup of steaming hot milky chai.

Apna Bazaar does not provide many options for vegetarians, and with the exception of potato samosas and naan bread all of the dishes are meat based. Drink selections are also limited but include water, chai, Coke and some Pakistani sodas including the sweet and floral Pakola.

Our bill, including drinks, came to about $10 per person. The owner seemed willing and able to adjust the spice level in most of the dishes. We recommend calling ahead an hour before you want to collect your food.

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Posted in Indian, Pakistani, Restaurant

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Euro Delicatessen

Posted on May 25, 2010 | 4 comments

974 Galloway Road
(Galloway Square)
614.870.0723

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The business card says that Euro Delicatessen  is “A mini grocery store specializing in European Foods,” but this claim is modest -for anyone looking for Eastern European delicacies, this is a treasure trove. This clean, bright store sells candies, bread, packaged baked goods, cured meats, pickles, teas and a variety of other hard to find items.

Our attention, unsurprisingly, was mostly captured by the two refrigerated cases of sausages and pork products containing 3 or 4 types of bacon and many many types of kielbasa sausage including kabanosy and moldavska. Sausages hailed from countries including Russian, Poland, Hungary, Estonia and the Ukraine. We were given tastes of several of the sausages to aid in our decision making. It didn’t seen to help as each one seemed better than the last.

We were also interested in the wide variety of pierogi and pelmeni – almost twenty varieties mostly from Grandma’s pierogis in Toronto, but there were some homemade pelmeni.

There were also whole smoked mackerel and other smoked fish, cheeses, kvass (a drink made with fermented rye bread), kefir (a fermented milk drink) and, as befits somewhere selling pierogis, plenty of butter and sour cream.

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Posted in European, Grocery store

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