16400 Pacific Coast Highway
Huntington Beach, CA 92649
(562) 592-9080
http://www.himalayangrill.com
I've tried Himalayan food at Tibet Nepal House in Pasadena before. I tried their lunch buffet, and really liked it. I thought Himalayan food tasted like mixture of Indian and Chinese food. Dr. P has never had Himalayan food before. When I described it to him, he was eager to try.
I found Himalayan Grill from Groupon. I bought a $40 gift certificate for $20. Besides Himalayan food, this restaurant also serves traditional Indian food.
The restaurant is not big, only with about 10 tables. They had a few TVs playing Laker games. We decided to go with their combination dinner to save both time to decide and money. They had 3 combination options: Himalayan, Indian non-vegetarian, and Indian vegetarian. We went for the $49.99 Himalayan Dinner Combination for 2.
Crispy Thin Bread
The meal started with some crispy thin bread. I had this bread in Indian restaurants before.
Condiments
There were some different condiments on the table to go with the bread. The sweet brown sauce was my favorite. I had no idea what the green sauce was, but Dr. P liked it. There were also some pickled veggies.
Yeti Beer ($7.95)
We shared a bottle of Yeti Beer. It was the first time I tried it. The beer had a very clean and crisp taste. I like it!
Lamb Thupka ($10.95)
The perfect dish for cold winter weather. Hearty soup made with Tibetan style noodles cooked with lamb cubes, mixed vegetables and our house herb & spices
Lamb Thupka was sort of like a Chinese noodle soup, but with some Indian flavor spices added. It had a lot of vegetables in it. The lamb cubes were very tender. We enjoyed the noodle soup a lot. I was almost full already after the Lamb Thupka.
Meat Momo ($10.95)
Steamed dumplings filled with ground chicken and mixed vegetables served with http://www.eileenlikestoeat.com made tomato achhar (spicy salsa)
Meat Momo is chicken and vegetable dumplings. The dumplings tasted just like Chinese dumplings. The dipping sauce was the thing that made the dumplings special. The sauce had a spicy Indian curry flavor to it. We both like the dumplings a lot, until.... Dr. P got a dumpling with very chewy filling. Then he realized that it was a piece of rubber band!!!! When Dr. P spit it out, the waiter saw. He came over and just grabbed the rubber band out of Dr. P's hand. He did offered to exchange the momo for us. But we thought they probably pre-made all the dumplings from the same fillings. We were glad that there was no more rubber bands in the rest of the dumplings.
Tandoori Mix Grill ($19.95)
A combination of our tandoori chicken, chicken tikka,boti kebab, sheesh kebab and Fish Tikka. Marinated with special spices & herbs
Tandoori Mix Grill had a lot of meat on the sizzling plate. Fish, tandoori chicken, chicken breast, and lamb. This restaurant really knows how to cook lamb right. The lamb was so tender and flavorful. I also like the salmon a lot.
Basmati Boiled Rice ($2.50) / Tofu Curry ($8.95)
Tofu cooked with fresh onion, tomato based sauce and our own house herbs & spice
Most of the Indian curry tofu I've had was made with medium or hard tofu. But this version was made with silky tofu, which made it tasted more Chinese. The curry sauce was tomato based, and it was very good with Basmati Boiled Rice.
Himalayan Nan (Sweet Bread) ($3.95)
Nan stuffed with raisins and cashew nuts
At first I thought this was the typical Indian Nan bread, but I bit into it and found out that it was sweet. It wasn't too sweet, just a hint. It was good eating just by itself. It was even better when eating with a savory dish because then it got that sweet /savory combo I like.
The center of the nan bread was stuffed with cashew and lentil (? I think). Very very tasty. Love it!
Kheer ($3.00)
Nepali style rice pudding with cardamom and nuts
Dessert was a bowl of Kheer to share. The rice pudding was very dense and sweet. This was just alright for me. I am just not a fan of Indian style dessert.
We really enjoyed the food at Himalayan Grill. Too bad about the rubber band. I also thought they would take off that dish from the bill, or at least give us some sort of discount. But nope, they didn't. I think I would still come back because their food is really good. But they really need to be more careful about what goes into the food.
[ad#ad-unit]
Didn't Dr. P know that rubber bands are delicious and eating them is very healthy? (hahaha)
ReplyDeletehaha I think he learned that from our dining experience.
You are more forgiving than me. I don't think I would come back after finding a foreign object in the food.
ReplyDeleteNormally I would never return. But their food is soooo good. I'm torn.
I personally would have asked for that dish to be taken off the bill since you didn't pay to lose your appetite. A similar thing happened to me at the Cheesecake Factory. While eating the leftovers of my crab cake sandwich the next day, I found a gigantic rusty nail in my sandwich. I fished it out, but kept eating it because I liked the sandwich too much. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteOMG nail? Someone could really get hurt with that.
But I totally get that you still finish the sandwich. I probably would done the same if I like the food. haha...
Looks a decent value and delicious! Another bad experience at Cheesecake Factory here is that we found hair (not the pleasant kind) in my friend's crab cake.
ReplyDeleteHmmm I don't think I'll order crab cake from Cheesecake Factory after hearing the nail and the hair story.
I've never tried Himalayan food before. Sounds interesting! I don't know if I would be happy after a rubber band experience though. What bad service!
ReplyDeleteI really think they should take the dish off the bill.
One time we found something in our food at McCormick & Schmick's, the entire meal was free.
They only charged us for the drinks. I forgave them right there and would definitely go back again.
ooh, that's disgusting...i would ask the manager to take the dish off the menu and try not to let this to spoil my dining mood. But i won't come back.
ReplyDeleteYeah we really should've said something to the manager.
I need to learn to speak up more when I'm not happy about something.
oh no that really sucks about them not really doing much in terms of the rubber band. but i did want to chime in that i think the green sauce is a cilantro chutney of sorts.
ReplyDeleteI did a quick search online, and found that there are 2 kinds of Indian green sauce.
It's either cilantro chutney or mint chutney. With this one, I didn't really taste the cilantro.
So I think it could be mint. But then, I didn't taste mint, either... haha... I'm confused.
the cilantro chutney i had before had a very muted cilantro taste. not a strong one that can be found in other asian cuisines. i think that it is much more muted because of the other flavors coming together in the cilantro chutney.
ReplyDeleteThat make sense. Indian spices has really strong flavor that overpower the cilantro taste.
It's a pretty good sauce, but I still like the brown sweet one better. ^^
That's a lot a food, what a great deal with the coupon!
ReplyDeleteThat green condiment looks like green-leaf chutney with mint, cilantro, green onion, green chili, etc. I also like the brown one (think it's tamarind chutney?).
Last week I had curry tofu at an Indian restaurant and it was a kind of cheese-tofu (don't remember if it's called curry cheese or curry tofu =P). It's very good, actually better than chicken curry because they use chicken breast, which is pretty dry in general and not much flavor.
As much as I like Indian curry, I just can't appreciate basmati rice, so I always end up having naan. I remember having this Indian rice dish that's sticker than usual, and when I told my colleague I loved it coz it's stickier, she laughed and told me that it's not cooked properly --- the rice should be washed for many times to remove the surface starch, and when it's cooked halfway, the water should be changed to ensure completely non-stick grains. I guess I don't dislike basmati rice, but it needs to be the stickier version =P
I think you are talking about Paneer. I LOVE paneer. It tasted like firm tofu.
I love it in the spinach dish (Saag Paneer). You don't like basmati rice?
I actually like the dry rice. But I HAVE TO have garlic nann, too! haha...