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Mon-Fri, Indian Food in Cherry Hill.
Mar. 26th, 2004 07:35 pmtoday my semi-boss told me that she had finished writing up my job description, and it was off to HR for "rating" (ie: finding out how little they can pay me.) since this was a done deal, she said that starting monday, i could ditch working on saturday and working at night. starting monday i'm a nine-to-fiver monday thru friday type once more. (actually, i haven't EVER worked nine to five, the closest i came was in the military, when i worked from 7am until "whenever the job got done" which typically was around six at night,) anyhow, it is bizarre. anytime anything good happens to me, i sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop. (here is this great opportunity, that you worked hard for, and earned, BUT! you have to eat a slug everyday for the rest of your career! It's a small price to pay, and you know it geek-boy! so here's your slug. get to eatin! (um, can i have some salt with this?) NO! you're FIRED!)
I've worked at this place for a year, and every evening at lunch, i have to dig through the menus to try and find something i can eat. (that is, if i haven't brought my own frozen, lifeless, microwaveable lunch) everything in New Jersey seems to be deep fried, and contain either the word "Buffalo" or "CheeseSteak" in the description, like "Buffalo Cream Cheese Jalapeno Poppers," or "Cheesesteak salad" (no kidding, it's a real thing.) The veggie options are always limited. Usually i end up going to Whole Foods and eating at their hot bar, which can be sketchy and on more than one occasion, has made me ill.
However, I work with two older Indian ladies, and when they found that I wanted some real Vegetarian options, they told me to visit the Indian Grocery in the local strip mall. In a building tacked on to the side was an "Indian Greasy Spoon," called "Rajbhog." Since they close early, I could never go, until recently, when my car's windshield wipers stopped working. That night we had a big snowstorm, and i could not drive home. So i had to leave my car at work. I caught a ride home with a co-worker, and the next day I took public transportation to Camden, and then to Cherry Hill. I ended up walking about a mile from the nearest stop on the busline to the industrial park where i work. I took my car to the local Saturn dealer (across the street from where i work) and they fixed my wipers in about five minutes, so I found myself in Cherry Hill two hours before work started, and I was hungry. So I figured I'd give Rajbhog a turn. The little store's raison d'etre is small sweets like the one it is named for, and they have a huge selection of these. (Apparantly Rajbhog is a chain, with other stores in Chicago, New York and Northern Jersey, they are the national distributor for many exotic Indian sweets, and they very well may be the source of your local Indian restaurant's dessert menu.) In addition to the sweet counter, they had a huge cooler of ice cream (mango, saffron-pistacio, raisin-cashew, rose-pistacio, rose) and another cooler full of frozen samosas and imported indian softdrinks with names like Thums Up, Rimzim, Limca, and Maaza. (There is some doubt as to the presence of DDT and other pesticides in these drinks, all of which are produced by my old monkey, good old Coca-Cola, so I did not partake of them, although Thums Up proports to be the drink that "seeks to separate the men from the boys," so it was tempting to see where i stood, man-boy-wise, but i resist, i remain pure,) But anyhow, in the back they had a small buffett tray table with curries, rice, and breads.
Everyone here was indian, the clientelle and the staff, and I definitely caught a few stares until it became clear that I wasn't going to just pop in and out and make everyone uncomfortable, but i intended to come and sit and eat, and then it was business as usual. True to my co-worker's promise, the menu was entirely vegetarian, and mainly southern indian in influence. (a flyer actually proclaimed the food to be "punjabi" which seems to mean Dosas and Chaats, less cream based, very spicy, unlike some ayurvedic indian food, this contained aromatics, like onion and garlic.) It was fair to middling indian food, nowhere near the finest indian food i've eaten (which is at Amma's in Georgetown, DC) but it was better than any Indian food i've had in Philly so far. And it was cheap, since it was mostly "snack-bar" styled food. I had a sort of mini-thali with Malai Kofta and Cholle, with Puri, an Aloo Paratha, a small dish of a wonderful Yogurt to kill the spice, a Chili-Lime pickle, and for desert a single Golab Jamun. This was all for the round price of Five Bucks. That, my friends, is a bargain, especially considering that this mini-thali was the most expensive thing on the menu. They gave you no silverware, the idea was to use the Poori to scoop up the food. This was a first for me at indian restaurants, but i hear it is somewhat traditional. The dish had a little to much ghee in it for me to do that, me having to go to my tie and collar job afterwards, but i was able to finally find a rack of plastic spoons over by the ice cream cooler. The food was everything i wanted, and it did not upset my stomach, so I will eat there at every opportunity, and i will chatter about it until everyone tells me to stop and finish my slug.
I've worked at this place for a year, and every evening at lunch, i have to dig through the menus to try and find something i can eat. (that is, if i haven't brought my own frozen, lifeless, microwaveable lunch) everything in New Jersey seems to be deep fried, and contain either the word "Buffalo" or "CheeseSteak" in the description, like "Buffalo Cream Cheese Jalapeno Poppers," or "Cheesesteak salad" (no kidding, it's a real thing.) The veggie options are always limited. Usually i end up going to Whole Foods and eating at their hot bar, which can be sketchy and on more than one occasion, has made me ill.
However, I work with two older Indian ladies, and when they found that I wanted some real Vegetarian options, they told me to visit the Indian Grocery in the local strip mall. In a building tacked on to the side was an "Indian Greasy Spoon," called "Rajbhog." Since they close early, I could never go, until recently, when my car's windshield wipers stopped working. That night we had a big snowstorm, and i could not drive home. So i had to leave my car at work. I caught a ride home with a co-worker, and the next day I took public transportation to Camden, and then to Cherry Hill. I ended up walking about a mile from the nearest stop on the busline to the industrial park where i work. I took my car to the local Saturn dealer (across the street from where i work) and they fixed my wipers in about five minutes, so I found myself in Cherry Hill two hours before work started, and I was hungry. So I figured I'd give Rajbhog a turn. The little store's raison d'etre is small sweets like the one it is named for, and they have a huge selection of these. (Apparantly Rajbhog is a chain, with other stores in Chicago, New York and Northern Jersey, they are the national distributor for many exotic Indian sweets, and they very well may be the source of your local Indian restaurant's dessert menu.) In addition to the sweet counter, they had a huge cooler of ice cream (mango, saffron-pistacio, raisin-cashew, rose-pistacio, rose) and another cooler full of frozen samosas and imported indian softdrinks with names like Thums Up, Rimzim, Limca, and Maaza. (There is some doubt as to the presence of DDT and other pesticides in these drinks, all of which are produced by my old monkey, good old Coca-Cola, so I did not partake of them, although Thums Up proports to be the drink that "seeks to separate the men from the boys," so it was tempting to see where i stood, man-boy-wise, but i resist, i remain pure,) But anyhow, in the back they had a small buffett tray table with curries, rice, and breads.
Everyone here was indian, the clientelle and the staff, and I definitely caught a few stares until it became clear that I wasn't going to just pop in and out and make everyone uncomfortable, but i intended to come and sit and eat, and then it was business as usual. True to my co-worker's promise, the menu was entirely vegetarian, and mainly southern indian in influence. (a flyer actually proclaimed the food to be "punjabi" which seems to mean Dosas and Chaats, less cream based, very spicy, unlike some ayurvedic indian food, this contained aromatics, like onion and garlic.) It was fair to middling indian food, nowhere near the finest indian food i've eaten (which is at Amma's in Georgetown, DC) but it was better than any Indian food i've had in Philly so far. And it was cheap, since it was mostly "snack-bar" styled food. I had a sort of mini-thali with Malai Kofta and Cholle, with Puri, an Aloo Paratha, a small dish of a wonderful Yogurt to kill the spice, a Chili-Lime pickle, and for desert a single Golab Jamun. This was all for the round price of Five Bucks. That, my friends, is a bargain, especially considering that this mini-thali was the most expensive thing on the menu. They gave you no silverware, the idea was to use the Poori to scoop up the food. This was a first for me at indian restaurants, but i hear it is somewhat traditional. The dish had a little to much ghee in it for me to do that, me having to go to my tie and collar job afterwards, but i was able to finally find a rack of plastic spoons over by the ice cream cooler. The food was everything i wanted, and it did not upset my stomach, so I will eat there at every opportunity, and i will chatter about it until everyone tells me to stop and finish my slug.
