Maison Tandoori

I've been craving grilled meat for a while now, so I searched the Encyclopedia Internet to determine the place with BBQ within closest proximity to me. Turns out it's Maison Tandoori, an Indian restaurant about a block from here that has a really good lunch buffet that I've gone to a couple times since we've been here. Since I enjoyed the lunch buffet, I figured that their dinner couldn't be too shabby either. I had already decided that I would order the Tandoori platter, complete with a full chicken leg (thigh attached), chicken breast, lamb, beef and shrimps. It all goes down from here.

There were only 4 other patrons in the restaurant during our hour or so dinner. We ordered coffees upon our arrival and, after several requests for them, did not receive them until our dinners were on the table, about 45 minutes later. We wanted coffees to warm up because we were coming in from a cold, wintery wind, not because coffee is a complimentary beverage to curry (because, I assure you, it does nothing to soothe the gentle burn of chilies). The only waiter was having a lot of trouble attending to only 3 tables of 2 and kept having to go back to the kitchen to assist with cooking.

From what I could tell, the other 2 tables did not order appetizers or desserts, so 6 dishes should not be an overwhelming task for a kitchen to handle whatsoever. Something is definitely amiss here. Shannon ordered the chicken rojan josh and was skeptical of whether it was cooked thoroughly. It came with naan that was doughy and cold. I had a similar experience with my beef, which was more like Shami than I was expecting. It was completely charred outside and very pink inside. Though it may simply be from seasoning or something, since the outside had turned brown like ground beef would and my ignorance prevented me from knowing otherwise, I simply set the rest of these aside to prevent food poisoning.

The Tandoori Chicken was dry and kind of pastey. The shrimps were extremely overcooked. I can only hope they weren't in the tandoor for the length of cooking required for the chicken, which had been overdone as well. Somehow the lamb was absolutely perfect though, very tender and wonderfully seasoned. Why couldn't the whole platter be like this? Needless to say, after a 5-10 minute wait for the check, we paid and got out of there as quickly as possible.