Queen of India – Al Khobar

‘Hali ka try natin ang Queen of India.’ That’s what my friend said when he invited me last week to a luncheon. I was shocked talaga and said ‘Di ba furniture shop iyan?’ I really thought that it’s a furniture shop since ‘Bombay’ in Al Subeaei Building (beside Silver Tower) is a furniture shop. I just thought that Queen of India is a furniture shop as well. Yon na nga, I was so wrong ha ha ha ha… It turned out that the Queen of India is a high end restaurant.

I was never a fan of Indian food. How can I be when I haven’t really eaten an honest to goodness Indian dish. I only experience the Indian cuisine by watching ‘FLOYD’s INDIA’, a show in the lifestyle network. The basics of Indian cuisines are curry + turmeric + dozen of spices. Eating all of those spices would make us all Filipino throw up. At ang amoy… grabe nakakasuka talaga. If you’re with an Indian colleague, you’ll know what I mean. Kasi nilalabas nila at nagiging pawis na nila iyong curry na kanilang kinain. Grabe nakakasuka talaga!

Yon na nga! Since it was an invitation to a free lunch ha ha ha ha .. i relented to my friend’s invitation. We were expecting Indian food servers but when we reach the place we were greeted by Kabayans. The kabayan explains that for hygienic reasons, the owner of the place prefers Filipino food servers. The kabayan though assured us that the cooks are from the South of India. Almost all of their guests are Westerners. We were the only Asians there except for the servers of course.

We tried the free samplers which are pickled red onions, mango and the yogurt and mint sauce (very light). We also tried the spicy shrimp na grabe talaga naman sa pagka spicy. We also ordered chicken soup which is surprising because it doesn’t have a curry. As for the main course, we ordered several servings of Chicken Masala and other variants of masalas of India and the plain beryani rice. Surprisingly (ang hilig ko sa surprisingly ano?), the meal wasn’t as spicy as I initially thought. In reality, it’s delicious and I really enjoyed the meal. I couldn’t believe that our meal lasted for 2 hours. I promised myself that I’m going back to the place one of these days.