glad you liked the fuksha!! the shells are very fragile and meant to be eaten very rapidly, especially if they are filled with the tamarind water (which they should be!), so they really arent going to make it home. The ones we had had yogurt (dahi) in them too. In india the shells are filled and handed to you one by one, by the vendor, as @Saregama reminded me. My daughter had been protecting me from the effects of “dirty street food” when there, finally this vendor in a mall was deemed safe for me!
Never sure how this is pronounced. I have a Bengali shopping strip near where I live, and they say ‘fuchka.’ (fooch-ka).
When I Google it, fuksha gets 52,000 responses, but fuchka gets 1,400,000.
And I’ve yet to be served pani puri/golgappa/fuchka with warm shells.
It makes sense that the shells are cold - gives them a chance to firm up. India and Bangladesh are hot countries and the tamarind water is not warm either!
all the food looks wonderful, can’t wait to try some of it upon our return! @ninkat maybe we can follow the bread crumbs to some of these places!
Sounds like a plan! Or, I need to retire already!
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Returned for a Diwali weekend stroll today.
The only Indian sweet shop left in the neighborhood was in peak form: main shop shut down, tables arranged from end to end laden with a wide range of fresh sweets, and very orderly dealing out of the goodies. They’ve taken over the store next door, so today the main shop was just a line, and the adjacent (empty) space was where they were serving.
Some brave (non-Indian) tourists right in front me had decided they’d wait in the 30-odd minute line just to see what it was all about and took a 2lb assortment with them. Meanwhile some young ladies of Indian origin behind me decided they didn’t have patience to wait for the sweets their mothers had instructed them to buy – after getting past the halfway point, go figure.
I have a personal rule against lines at this point in my life, but it’s Diwali and it was the only thing so far that has made it feel that way, so I made an exception. Plus, this is the one time a year that the sweets are as good as they are in India (I wouldn’t be surprised if they flew specialists over.)
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Grabbed a coffee and a meat-stuffed yucca croquette (I think it’s called a carimañola) on my way over at a Colombian cafe, which was good sustenance for the line.
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Today’s take-home kabab items of choice were chargha (like tandoori chicken, not quite as flavorful as real tandoori chicken imo, but a lot better than most American tandoori chicken), two varieties of chicken seekh kabab, and malai kabab (like chicken tikka but white and a lot tastier).
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looks wonderful! One of my clients in iselin used to have a wonderful diwali celebration, I tried to make it there every year but had no real idea what I was purchasing at Quality Sweets, I’d just ask for an assortment. are you purchasing kebabs from kebab king? kebabish looked interesting last I was there.
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Possibly. I think it’s the one time that there’s enough turnover that the sweets are fresh – critical (as I know you know) for milk sweets. I remember the sign in the great sweet shop Chitale Bandhu in Pune that firmly ordered you to use today’s mawa (aka khoya – milk condensed to a soft solid) today itself.
The one time you could reliably get fresh Indian sweets in NY was when Surbhi Sahni ran a sweet counter at the front of one of the restaurants Hemant Mathur had taken over on Lex as part of his short-lived attempt to convert each into one that specialized in a different regional Indian cuisine. She now has Tagmo, but I’ve found their sweets disappointing (and expensive).
are the kebabs from kebab king? they look tasty! sorry I couldnt go along on this mission, another time!
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@vinouspleasure @JenKalb Kababs were variously from Kabab king, Merit, and Kababish. I’m usually loaded down with a grocery bag or two and lazy about walking the extra bit to Kababish (they’re also spicier ime), but the ownership at Kabab king seems to have changed at some point and the staff is annoying to deal with now, so I may not bother next time.
Merit is more hectic given its prime location, but the seekhs were actually better than Kabab king. The hot food bar also looked good (and was labeled, as opposed to Haat bazaar), with lots of locals sitting and eating dinner when I stopped in.
If I remember, I’ll go to Kababish first on my next visit, to avoid the bags-are-too-heavy situation at the end.
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There’s fresh and then there’s good.
Most of the Indian sweets made here are just not good, even when fresh.
(Kind of like tandoori chicken, which is also mostly just bad.)
At Diwali, and only at Diwali ime, Maharaja sweets are good (including the Bengali sweets which are just plain bad elsewhere).
I have completely given up on finding tandoori as good as I had in India, are there places in nyc that come close?
and the leftover dry tandoori chicken gets recycled into other sauced dishes. One reason I tend to rarely order chicken in Indian restaurants
Further on that point: Apart from tasting the tandoori chicken, are there any outward signs that a restaurant might prepare it more or less well?
Inverse proportionality to neon redness (as a rough guide).
Is that Maharaja Sweets? They were profiled in this Times article from last year:
BTW, one of the shops in that article is Jayasri Sweets in Hendon, VA. Their kaja is indeed serious and I make a point to get some whenever I’m in the nabe. Other items not particularly interesting.
not about sweets and not about Jackson Heights but just saw this on a related topic and closer to some of us
Sadly, no. Though Moti mahal is probably decent enough (in your delivery radius too) but not cheap.
At the cabbie / pakistani / bangladeshi places you can order Chargha which is similar but not always red, though it differs slightly (tandoori has a more prominent yogurt marinade, chargha tends to have rougher spices crusted to the chicken). (Chicken tikka most places is sometimes less disappointing than tandoori, even though they should be identical. (Chicken bihari, when it’s available, is better.)
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Not really, other than obvious signs (like it looks dry - avoid)
Well, most tikka masala here has boiled chicken cubes, so… 
