For Valentine's Day, I went out with two other guys to an Indian restaurant. I thought it would be really romantic. Akbar is a sunken-fronted restaurant on Charles street just north of Peabody, and it's well worth the shuttle trip down from Homewood to get there.
The whole area contains a brilliant array of food and Akbar is at the forefront of the booming lunch-buffet scene, including Fortune Szechwan, Kumari, and many others along Charles Street.
The place was packed, this is where people go for Indian food. In the foyer, waiting for our table, it was hard not to notice the abundance of awards Akbar won in the last 12 years. All these lauds are deserved. This is an Indian Restaurant with two capital letters and italic type.
The chicken and lamb in the curries is tender, the rice is fluffy, long-grained and colorful. The lassis are sweet or mango ??? if you want salt you have to ask. It also bears mentioning that if you drink salt lassis you probably already have a favorite Indian place.
Here's the really important information: when you sit down, there will be a basket of crispy flatbread, and three sauces. The first five minutes of conversation will be about what they are, whether they are spicy or not, tangy, vegetarian, etc. I'm going to save you some time. The thin brown one is sweet, made of tamarind (a tangy fruit that sometimes is made into a spicy paste, but mostly not) and some seasonings. The thicker green one that looks somewhere between chimi churri and salsa verde is a little spicy, very herby, and with a little vinegar in as well.
The downright chunky red one is an awesome spicy beet chutney thing. It tastes so good it should be elected to some sort of public office. There's a good layer of spice going on making the rich beet flavor a little hard to discern, and all the tastier when you figure it out. The texture of the paste picks up perfectly on that dense beet chewiness and makes a very good chutney.
The naan at Akbar is a little lighter and chewier on the inside, while remaining blacker on the outside, than neighboring naans (like at Kumari). If you like the blackened bits on pizza crusts, this is the place to go for naan. Also, the naan is just great for picking up bits of stew strewn over rice. If you feel weird eating with your fingers, you should really get over it, grabbing at stuff with naan is really the best thing to do.
Your curry will look small, and come in a lovely metal bowl set over a tea-light candle, kind of like those scented oil things you get in very expensive gift shops in malls. I'm not convinced that keeping the stew over a candle is a good idea here either; I'm just not sure the food stays that much warmer in exchange for having that much fire on the table.
The Vindaloo, my barometer of Indian restaurants, is a little creamy instead of being a bowl of fire. That may be because there's a little bit more potato than usual getting starch into the stew, making it smooth. Tamarind chicken is a welcome house specialty ??? it has the sweetness and the tang, and they'll throw in the spice if you ask. Spiced up it tastes like vindaloo retired to Italian coastline after a long career. Lamb Rogan Josh is worth eating, unspectacular though.
The service was so incredibly tight that not only did our food rest on a tray next to our table for a good five minutes before it made that last final jump to the table, but also two pitchers of water made it to two separate glasses on our table at the exact same time.
Such bizarre occurrences aside, Akbar is definitely worth it, and an essential component of Mt. Vernon's restaurant scene.
