Heritage India

April showers bring not only May flowers, but also the FDP’s love for ethnic cuisine!!  For our April outing, we settled on Heritage India in Dupont Circle.  Heritage India is beautifully decorated inside with waiters in black suits, and a long elegant bar along one side of the room.  The menu consists of many hot and cold appetizers, traditional tandoori goods, a nice selection of curries and several entrée courses.  The menu also held a selection of naan, traditional Indian bread, in flavors such as parmesan, garlic, and onion.  We knew right away we had to try several kinds.  In true FDP tradition, we handed the wine list to Amanda so she could choose a good bottle to compliment our dinner.  Her selection was the Wurtz Riesling which was so good, we ordered it twice. 

 

As with all of our piggy outings, we decided to each choose an appetizer to share, traditional and parmesan naan, and settled on 2 curry dishes to share as entrees.  Our appetizers included Bhel Puri, which is a quintessential image of Indian street food.  Bhel Puri is a combination of puffed rice, chickpea vermicelli, diced potatoes, chopped shallots, fresh cilantro and drizzled with a sweet & sour chutney.  Next was the Frankie also known as the “kathi roll”, which consisted of tiny dices of grilled chicken or cottage cheese, spiced and rolled into a flour tortilla.   Third to come was Papri Chat, which is, essentially, potatoes, onions, cilantro and crisp crackers topped with yogurt and a combination of tamarind and cilantro chutney.  This was a little sweet and spicy, but bites of the delicious naan between mouthfuls helped to cool us down.  The fourth appetizer we ordered was a lovely martini glass full of sautéed calamari, with a hint of coconut and lemon which complimented all of the other appetizers quite nicely.

 

After devouring our appetizers (we were hungry piggies), and ordering another bottle of  wine, we settled on our main courses.  And more naan of course.  For our entrees, we chose the Sag Paneer which is one of my personal favorites.  It’s a sort of fresh Indian cottage cheese, in a spinach sauce.  The cheese is sort of a cross between fresh ricotta and fresh mozzarella.  It was delicious.  Our second entrée was chicken makhani.  Because one of the FDP’s doesn’t eat lamb, we settled on the chicken instead.   There were 2 chicken dishes on the menu, but again, 1 piggy has a wimpy palette and asked if we could eat the less spicy of the 2.  Chicken makhani is tandoori grilled cubes of chicken in a rich tomato sauce.  We ordered extra basmati rice to sop up all the lovely sauce from both entrees.  And, since we stuffed ourselves to the gills, we decided to skip dessert this meal. 

 

Heritage India is really delicious food for not much money.  We split our bill and 2 bottles of wine and paid less than 40$ plus tip.  All in all, for both the friendly service and the tasty meals, we give Heritage India 2.5 oinks.

 

Stay tuned for our May dinner…………..