Aarzu Modern Indian Bistro Freehold

I’m in!

@seal, We may try to go to Aarzu for dinner mid-week sometime this month. But whether or not that happens, we’d love to get together with you and Mrs. seal in January.

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Unfortunately, we won’t be able to make it as I’ll be working. No such thing as time off the weekend before Xmas when you work in retail.

Hopefully, the food will be so good you all will be up for anther outing in January.

Missy

Too early for us–there’s no way we’d be hungry enough after our “Third Sunday” dim sum brunch that day.

Count me in yo

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Also unfortunately out. Enjoy all.

I will be in St john. If anyone has any cool recommendations there send me a PM. I hope you guys have a great time :smile: hopefully you get some great east Indian and I get some great west Indian food!

OK so I only have me+2, @CurlzNJ and @joonjoon

So I made a reservation for between 5 and 8 people for 5:30 this Sunday the 18th.

Anyone else?

Since the Giants game should be over by then I “might” stop by to say hello to everyone, although as noted above I won’t be eating. Unless you want to start a new food challenge the; Aarzu vs Junior Sh*t My Pants Challenge.

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I’ll put a dollar on that challenge!

Lol. We could definitely sell tickets!

I made a reservation for 8 people so we have a little wiggle room if there are any latecomers.

So, as is usual for these things, we went from 5 people to 8 people to 4 people by the time we sat to eat. Big props for the front of house for putting up with all my phone calls. We all arrived early and I was psyched as I was about share a great meal with my daughter, @CurlzNJ and @JoonJoon. Good friends around the holidays, what could be bad?

We decided to share a bunch of things – always fun. I insisted on the lamb and the eggplant but was open to anything else, which was good as Joon decided we had to have snake testicles, er, I mean fried okra. Which actually was really good.

The highlight ( after the lamb chops which are simply amazing ) of the meal was the house biryani cooked in a clay vessel sealed with bread dough. This came out moist and flavorful with a little heat - superb.

We shared a dessert sampler that was four very different tastes - see the picture. My favorite was the mango foam over indian rice pudding.

Another great night with amazing food and a nice bunch of HOs!

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Food coma preventing me from typing

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Now that I’ve recovered…
WOW, did we have a wonderful meal! I really can’t recall having such good Indian food since a dinner in (of all places) Boca Raton over a year ago (iirc, that restaurant is called Sapphire). But I digress.

I’ll start by saying there wasn’t a dud on the table, but as I’ve told people about the meal, the only two items I wouldn’t order again were the fried okra and the coconut curry apps. I don’t like okra but was fine with this version because it’s essentially a pile of fried goodness (think onion straws) but without much taste–esp when everything else was SO flavorful.

GET. THE. LAMBCHOPS. I don’t say this lightly; I believe that was the best lamb chop I’ve ever eaten. It was not only a decent size and thickness, it was expertly spiced/marinated and cooked in the tandoor. $26 for 5 chops is NOT unreasonable, imo.

Also get the eggplant chaat. Thinly sliced and lightly fried-and again, beautifully spiced.

We had had the chili/cheese naan, which was dubbed Indian pizza. It wa tastyy, but I’d much rather have more of the onion kulcha, which I referred to as an Indian bialy. :grin:Chock full of onion and simply delicious.

The other dishes: Butter Chicken (they should just serve a straw for the sauce, imo), the aforementioned chicken Biryani (which I dubbed Bottomless Biryani, because no matter how much we each ate, there was always more…), Gobhi Saag (spinach, broccoli, cauliflower), and finally, Dal Makhani. EVERYTHING is plated beautifully and every one of those dishes was terrific.

As @seal said, we had a quartet of desserts, and even though we had decided to order one dessert and each have a bite because we were so full, well… :wink:

Knowing that yesterday was going to be COLD, I got an order of Amritsari Chole (garbanzos) and basmati rice to go, and I can report that was equally delicious! Very earthy sauce. Lunch again today! :blush:

The service was friendly and attentive and I just can’t recommend this place highly enough.

One downside is they don’t appear to have a website. Not sure how you open a restaurant in 2016 without one, but they do have a Facebook page.

Uh, aarzu.com.

Thanks, Roz. It must be new; didn’t come up on the Google search, nor is it on their takeout menu!

Mr. RBI and I had dinner at Aarzu two evenings ago. You can find out what I thought of it by reading the review I posted on my blog.

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SO happy you and Michael enjoyed it as much as we did! I can’t be 100% sure, but the 2nd dessert you received looks like Gulab Jalum, a classic Indian sweet. I have to agree that I’m usually not a fan of Indian desserts because they’re usually too sweet for me and/or contain too much rose water or syrup, but I LOVED the items we had at Aarzu. Then again, I’d eat another lamb chop for dessert, but that’s just ME. :blush:

@RGR I Tweeted a link to your blog post and Aarzu just replied (I don’t think you’re on Twitter): ‏@myAarzu Thank you for this lovely blog post on Aarzu, The Wizard of Roz!

Thanks, @CurlzNJ! Actually, I am on Twitter. I’m now following you. If you want to follow me: @rozrapp. I didn’t realize Aarzu is on Twitter. Had I known, I would have have done the @ thingy for them.

I held out a long time but recently joined Instagram: @rozrap.

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