Title: House of Curries
Author: ENU

House of Curries (lunch)
391 Grand Ave. @Staten Ave., Oakland (near Lake Merritt)
Website: http://houseofcurries.com/rmenu.html
Review date: April 2012

The Old Place Seafood dim sum restaurant has closed and a branch of this local Indian/Pakistani chain, House of Curries, has taken over with a quick repainting of the interior. It's so new this address isn't even up on the website yet.

Carlos and I are taking advantage of my MIL's absence (she's visiting friends for a week) to go out for all the foods she doesn't care for – spicy Indian and Korean, eat-with-your-hands Ethiopian, and an Indonesian rijstaffel tomorrow evening (see Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rijsttafel for an explanation, although a restaurant version usually only offers a modest 8+ dishes).

Both Indian and Ethiopian cuisines have wonderful vegetarian dishes that are a great counterpoint to their meat dishes. When we go out for Indian food, we love naan (leavened flatbread), rice, and raita (seasoned yogurt dip), eaten with a spicy curry. 

We tried the Albany location of House of Curries, which was a small, bare-bones location for fast food and take-out, back in April 2009. This new location on Grand is quite large, an odd mix of both cafeteria and waiter table service. You sit down on a glass-topped tablecloth covered table, and the waiter brings you menus. 

But you go up to the wait-station to order. The chai and all beverages are self-service – Carlos loves this, as he can have as much chai as he wants (and that's a lot, LOL). 

Then the waiter brings you the food – all the tables have big numbers on them, so orders can be kept straight. However, there was a large office party of some 24 people that day for lunch, and so the waiter went over and wrote down all the orders, instead of having everyone come up to the cash register.

We were really impressed by the lamb Boti (kebabs) at the Albany location, and were pleased to find the ones here on Grand Ave. are almost as good. The serving has gotten a little smaller and the price is a couple of bucks more, to be expected after three years have passed. 

HoC sells so much of this dish, they make it ahead of time. It's very good U.S. lamb, large cubes well marinated in yoghurt. Unfortunately they don't grill at this location; it's baked so you miss those nice crispy edges we found at the Albany location.

The chicken tandoori is sold by the piece, white meat or dark. It's well-seasoned but not oversalted and is wonderful with a squeeze of the fresh lemon wedge they give you – something we can't say about every version of chicken tandoori we've tried. Like the Boti, it comes with a side garnish of sliced raw onions and bell peppers. Carlos loves tandoori, and House of Curries makes a surprisingly good chicken version for a modest cost. 

Being able to order it by the piece is brilliant from a marketing standpoint, especially since many diners are either alone or with a single companion. You can get a bit of variety, but not be inundated with leftovers unless you want them.

The tandoori items aren't made ahead of time, so it does take 15-20 minutes to cook these dishes. Everything else comes out super-fast, so if you want everything together, let the waiter know how you want the dishes timed.

We also ordered the Palak Paneer, spinach cooked with fresh cheese cubes. Every restaurant makes this a little differently. Sometimes the spinach is so long simmered it turns almost brown, forming a runny gravy. Occasionally we'll encounter a fresh, bright green dish like the one Everest Café/Berkeley served us in March 2011, with housemade fried cheese. Kabana/Berkeley also makes a wonderful version, more similar to House of Curries', except Kabana uses a lot of ghee, the clarified butter. 

HoC goes much lighter on the fat content. They compensate by making their palak paneer on the spicy side, using some chiles but mostly a lot of shredded fresh ginger to give it that spicy "bite." The spinach is braised but still has some soft texture to it with little gravy. This makes it work well as a side vegetable rather than a sauced curry.

We ordered the cheese naan, which is made with mozzarella – standard commercial shredded stuff, but it's generously applied inside. The flour isn't the best, but with the cheese it's decent stuff. We didn't care for the plain naan we tried at the Albany location of HoC. When it comes to bread, the quality of flour actually does matter.

The rice is Basmati, unfortunately fairly hard, and even worse, served on a plate. The Grand Ave. location is drafty and cold inside – it always has been – which turns the leftover rice hard in a very few minutes. 

The raita is loose and only mildly seasoned. Their raita bowls are on the small side for us, since we love the stuff and use it on just about everything. 

Still, it's easy to forgive the minor flaws when you're looking at such a modest cost for decent Indian food. HoC isn't gourmet and even with table service, not even remotely upscale, unless you're comparing this location to their other hole-in-the-wall places. But the server was young and cheerfully enthusiastic; the chai was milky and fresh (and stronger than they make it at the Albany shop)…and the cost for a filling meal for the two us was within a dollar of what we pay at our favorite taqueria.

This is their sixth location to open within Alameda County during a period when most restaurateurs are hanging on by their fingernails. Their portions are reasonably sized (similar to Kabana but not as butter-rich) and the kitchen knows how to season food without drowning it with salt. They also don't overcook their meat, something that Indus Village/Berkeley and Kamdesh/Oakland, good as they are, haven't quite figured out yet.

House of Curries cuts corners discreetly, where most people wouldn't notice. It's smart, from a business standpoint. Considering they undercut just about everyone else in price and value, you can't argue with success.

Two people: Three dishes, one bread, one raita, with a $5 tip stuffed in the tip jar, was only $37.