don't go for a curry in NZ

where do i start?

okay, i'll start at the beginning, seems like a rather obvious place really.

i went for a curry last night in Hamner springs. i've been travelling for a while and i missed indian food understandably. the indian restaurant yesterday was pretentious gourmet rubbish. i ordered a traditional indian thali which was tasty but clearly marketed as a gimmik. still far too mild but the extra fresh chillies did the trick, and the tanquery and tonic made up for the gourmet-ness. in fact if it wasn't for the gourmet-ness, they probably wouldn't have had the tanquery, so all is forgiven.

anyway, i'm in kaikoura today, and i passed another indian restaurant. this one didn;'t look half as flash as the other from yesterday. so i figured it would have proper authentic old skool indian food. mmm, tasty.

yes, it did have authentic sounding indian food. i've been desperate for a lamb keema (minced lamb curry) eve3ryone knows what it is, and i figured the chef would be able to rustle one up, it wasn't actually on the menu, but this was a small place and i was sure he'd oblige - i mean they had balle balle bhangra blaring out of the speakers.

the waitress seemed nice and took my special order to the chef who came out and didn't really seem to know what i wanted and eventually just said no and stalked off into the kitchen. i'm sure i'm going to have spit in my curry. still, i went ahead and had a chicken tikka masala, orederd as HOT (a stock favorite and you can't go wrong with this one).

it came out and was quite tasty, just not hot enough. so i asked for some extra chillies.

the chef had NO CHILLIES!


just take a moment out to digest this. an indian restaurant where the chef has no chillies.

it's like an italian with no pasta, a chinese with no noodles, a japanese with no sushi, a thai with no coconut, i could go on, but i've run out of comparisons.

suffice to say this just said it all. i am not impressed with the state of NZ's indian restaurants. :(

that's all, rant over, nothing to see here, go about your business now...