Chutney Masala Indian Bistro
4 West Main Street
Irvington, NY 10533 (Map it!)
Attendees: Jeffrey, Shelley, Pat, Sylvia
It’s another dinner outing for the Westchester Breakfast Club. Again, we end up in Irvington. We seem to like this area. It’s fancy! Chutney Masala is where we dine, an Indian restaurant participating in Westchester’s Restaurant Week. We’ve been to Malabar Hill in Elmsford for its brunch buffet, so we’ll see how this holds up.
The place is a standalone red brick building right over the train tracks. We arrived just before sunset so we watched the sun go down over the hills just beyond the Hudson River. That’s one of the best parking lots to take a picture of both the sunset and the Tappan Zee Bridge. It’s also the parking lot to Red Hat and the Boat House.
The entire group arrived and we all ordered off the pre-fixe menu. We also ordered the vegetarian sampler appetizer from the regular menu. I just really wanted samosas. It also came with onion frits, some sort of fried eggplant, and a patty of deliciousness. I don’t remember what the patties were called, but they were delicious. The whole platter was delicious. Especially the samosas. The onion frits were especially good. I couldn’t stop eating them.
As for the pre-fixe appetizer, I had the fried tilapia. They were small pieces but they were good. Fried perfectly and with a light kick of spice. The entrées came; I had the Gao Shrimps. They had a good kick to them as well. The shrimps were well cooked and the coconut chili sauce was smooth and delicious. There was an entire chili just hanging out in the bowl, which added to the flavor. There was also a basket of naan on the table.
Now, here’s where the service of the establishment really comes into question. I understand that there may be a delay in food service. It may take a long time to cook the meal, even though there was an extremely long amount of time between each part of the meal. But during the entrées, there was no water service. The food was spicy. They should know that. They’re serving it. Why not keep up with the water service? I was dying there! And they also expected four people to share one small bowl of rice. They should have at least served two bowls at the same time. After the entrées, we had a bunch of stuff wrapped up. They did a good job of putting the 2 chili sauces and left over rice into take out containers, but Shelley’s chicken looked like it was haphazardly thrown into some aluminum foil. All the leftovers were just thrown into one bag. That’s right. One bag! For all of us! I had to carry my food home all awkwardly. Another bag would have helped.
Dessert was a saving grace for the restaurant. My mango mousse was delicious. The strawberry sauce added another level of flavor which made the mango flavor stand out a little more. Pat’s review of the mango mousse will probably be more descriptive.
So how did Chutney Masala hold up? The food was delicious! I couldn’t complain one bit about the food. The service, however, was lacking. I felt as though they forgot about us. Our reservation was for 7:00. We didn’t get out of there until 9. The people next to us left at the same time, but got there an hour after we arrived. Crazy, huh? Price wise, we browsed the regular menu and the prices weren’t too bad. I’d probably visit again and hope for better service. Maybe the poor service was just a fluke. Only one way to find out!
Why oh why was the service so long?
If our meal from start to finish hadn’t taken close to two and a half hours, I would have no problem saying that Chutney Masala was excellent. Because, service aside, every other element of our meal was pretty close to excellent. But, as is often the case in life, we tend to remember more the one negative thing despite the 10 other positive things.
Chutney Masala is located across the train tracks in Irvington, close to the Hudson river near Red Hat Bistro (which was, as you’ll recall, the location of last year’s WBC Restaurant Week dinner). It’s a compact-looking square brick building. On the interior, there are several tables on the first level, but the second level contains the main dining area. On this Sunday evening, all the diners were on the second floor, there was no one on the first floor.
We were seated at a table next to the window, allowing us to enjoy views of the river as the sun set into the Palisades across the way. The second floor dining area wasn’t all that large, but the tables were well-spaced so that you felt there was enough room between your table and the next table. The lighting was serene. It was an intimate, comfortable setting. Adorning the walls were black and white photographs of various scenes in India and various people from India. There were quite a few photographs depicting hunting, and then there was that stuffed deer head mounted on the wall. Back up. Yes, there was a deer head mounted on the wall. In an Indian restaurant. Now, I hardly claim to be a very worldly gal, but I don’t usually think of a deer head as an integral part of the decor in an Indian restaurant. Maybe it came with the building and the owners of Chutney Masala couldn’t get it off the wall. (Like on The Office, that creepy clown painting that Jim couldn’t get off the wall in his parents’ house.)
Anyway, after some flip-flopping between the regular menu and the restaurant week menu, we all decided to order from the prix fixe restaurant week menu, throwing in an appetizer sampler platter from the regular menu for good measure. I chose the vegetable fritters as my own appetizer, the tandoori chicken as my entree, and rice pudding for dessert. To share we selected the mixed vegetable appetizer sampler, which came with (more) vegetable fritters, eggplant fritters, samosas, and some delicious spinach and cheese patty that I believe was called a hara bhara. Oh hara bhara, your taste still lingers.
Our appetizers were brought out pretty promptly, which was good because we were all quite hungry. I’d done some intense yoga that day, Pat had driven back home from Massachussetts, Sylvia had gone for a run, and Jeff had…well, I don’t know how Jeff actually spent his day. But he was hungry too. Considering that the menu had said it was for two people, the appetizer sampler was much larger than I expected. Even if we hadn’t had our own personal appetizers as well, I’d say that the appetizer sampler would have been plenty for our party of four to share comfortably. Each individual item on the platter was very large. In fact, I’d venture to say that these were the largest samosas I’ve ever seen. (I unintentionally made an unusual gesture with my hands when commenting to our group how large I thought the samosas were. I think I made Jeff a bit uncomfortable. Sorry, Jeff.) The eggplant fritters were cooked in some crispy, orange exterior. The samosas, as I said, were large and delicious, with the perfect blend of a well fried cripsy exterior and smooth, well-spiced potatoes on the inside. To me, though, the spinach and cheese patties were the crowning glory of the appetizer platter. I’ve never before had anything like this in any other Indian restaurant. It was a smooth, flavorful blend of spinach and cheese, with a delicate lentil crumb coating on the outside. With a bit of tamarind sauce, it was near perfection.
My vegetable fritters appeared to be only onion fritters. No problem there, though, since I love onions (which maybe keeps people away…hmmm…but that’s another story). However, I question why the menu would have listed vegetable fritters if all that was being served were, in fact, onion fritters. Come on guys, just be honest. You wouldn’t have scared me away if you had just said on the menu “onion fritters.” I would have ordered them anyway.
Our appetizers were so filling and satisfying that we could have just called it a meal and left then. Now, maybe the servers overheard us commenting about how full we felt after our appetizers, because let me tell you, they certainly gave us plenty of time to digest.
So, about 40 minutes and several hundred conversation topics later, our entrees finally arrived. The place didn’t seem exceptionally busy on this Sunday evening. However, there did appear to be just one head waiter and one server on hand this evening. But could that alone have contributed to the slow service? I’m not so sure, but I suspect not. I say this because our food arrived hot, indicating to me that it hadn’t been sitting for too long in the kitchen waiting to be picked up by the waitstaff. No, I think the kitchen was perhaps understaffed this evening as well. I mean, we didn’t order anything exotic. We ordered standard dishes off the pre-set Restaurant Week menu. Tandoori chicken, chicken tikka masala? For an Indian restaurant, it doesn’t get any more basic than those dishes. My tandoori chicken was well-cooked and the portions were very generous; on my plate were two quarters, one white meat, one dark meat. The chicken was moist and came easily off the bone. However, the skin lacked that typical, tandoori yogurt sauce flavor that I’ve come to enjoy in tandoori chicken. It was also served without any lemon wedges, something else I’ve grown accustomed to at Indian restaurants. Perhaps this was a more sophisticated take on tandoori chicken, but I would have appreciated a bit more flavor. I was tempted to ask for another small portion of tamarind sauce, but given the pace of the service this evening, I had a feeling that if I had asked for this, I wouldn’t have gotten it until I was done with my chicken. So instead I just stole some spoonfuls of Pat’s tikka sauce, layering that sauce on top of my chicken and rice and naan. The sauce was delicate and creamy, just as a tikka sauce should be.
By the time we finished our entrees (at about 8:45), I was left bemoaning the fact that we still had to get through dessert. But we’re the WBC, we must persevere!
My rice pudding was…not quite what I expected. While it was cool and refreshing, calming my palate the way you’d hope following a spicy Indian meal, I couldn’t actually detect any rice in it. It just seemed to be rice pudding sauce, with some golden raisins and almond slivers thrown in for good measure, but no rice. It was more just like a cool, rice pudding-flavored soup. It was flavorful, but without any (or enough) rice to hold it all together, it can’t be called a rice pudding.
We each had to put down about $40 for tonight’s meal. I don’t know, in hindsight it seems that the evening started off on a really high note, but then slid downwards for the next two hours. However, that appetizer platter alone is enough to prevent me from dismissing Chutney Masala. There’s something there. So, despite the very slow service and the “rice” pudding, I’d return to Chutney Masala, perhaps for a Saturday lunch or dinner. Oh hara bhara, what mysterious spell have you cast upon me?
What I Had: A plethora of vegetarian appetizers, chili-chicken, chicken tikka masala, mango mousse with strawberry coulis
What It Cost: ~$35
Worth It: No
The rating: Food – 3.5/5, Price – 1.5/5, Service – -13/5 Total: 2/5
The Details: My fellow WBCers have covered the basics – Restaurant week, Irvington Indian eatery, views of the river, wonderful interior design. Let’s get to the food.
Appetizers: I ordered off the restaurant week menu, so I ordered the chili-chicken appetizer with my meal. In addition, the table got an assortment of vegetarian appetizers, which were uniformly brown, fried, and tasty. For me, the highlight was the vegetable fritter, which was salty, crispy on the outside with a more al dente interior, and well-seasoned, delivering a spicy kick for the after taste. The samosa seemed lukewarm, but I wonder if that wasn’t because I got to it after I had tried everything else. The chili-chicken lived up to its name, delivering a punch in the teeth of spicy with every bite. It was a hair too spicy, and that overshadowed what was a delicious ginger-based sauce underneath.
Now, it took a bit of time for us to get our appetizers. Not a ridiculous amount, but long enough that I noticed myself getting hungry. But that wouldn’t have been much of a problem, so long as our entrees got to us in time. So as I polished off the last of the appetizers, I looked forward to the entrees, which I thought must be arriving any minute.
They did not.
We waited. We waited some more. I went to the bathroom, hoping I’d come back and see the entrees resting in front of me. They weren’t. We kept waiting. In fact, we didn’t get our entrees until at least 75 minutes after we first sat down.
Sometimes, just by the sheer numbers of our breakfast club, we can put the service at a disadvantage. Most breakfast joints, especially the smaller ones we frequent, simply aren’t prepared to serve a party of six for breakfast, especially not one with the hearty appetites we WBCers have. Those delays, while frustrating, are understandable. This delay, however, was completely inexcusable. We were a party of four. We didn’t order an unreasonable amount of food. There’s no explanation for this horrific service experience.
When we finally got our entrees, I was in about as foul a mood as can be. I took it out on my chicken tikka masala, which violated one of the cardinal rules of a good chicken tikka masala. Chicken tikka should only be chunks of white breast meat; if you include dark meat, it’s because you’re trying to save money and pull one over on your patrons. That’s what Chutney Masala did. The sauce was fine. The rice was dry. The naan was just okay, and they didn’t give us nearly enough (or enough rice).
Dessert was a high point. The mango mousse, while it featured a curious, almost marshmallowy texture, had a spectacular flavor, and its richness was cut wonderfully by the strawberry coulis drizzled on top. I could have used more coulis, but the dessert was still a pleasant ending to an occasionally pleasant, but mostly unpleasant, evening.
By the time we left, thanks to the various delays, we had been sitting in the restaurant for more than two hours. I took five dollars off the bill at the end, because I couldn’t stomach the idea of giving a normal tip for such atrocious service. Nor can I stomach the thought of going back to Chutney Masala, when there are other, better, more professional Indian restaurants in virtually every town in Westchester. I will go to Bollywood Bistro, Malabar Hill, Mughal Palace, Passage to India, India House, and every other Indian restaurant I can find twenty times before I hit Chutney Masala again. I suggest you do the same.
The Bottom Line: Good, overpriced food with horrific service. Go elsewhere for your Indian fix.
Irvington strikes again! Of all the restaurants I’ve been to in Irvington, I have not been disappointed. Chutney Masala was very close to breaking that streak, but the food saved it from its slow service.
Chutney Masala is an Indian bistro located in the middle of the parking lot used for Red Hat and the Dayboat. It is a rather rustic looking brick building, and rustic on the inside too, complete with a deer’s head mounted on the wall next to the staircase up to the main dining room. We were seated by one of the windows with a lovely view (depending on which side of the table you were on) of the sunset over the Hudson.
We were there for the Restaurant Week Prix Fixe. The choices were plenty. It was actually difficult to decide on what combination I wanted! In the end we decided to add an order of the Vegetarian appetizer sampler in addition to our orders. Good call.
The combination I ended up with was: The Bhajjia (vegetable fritters), Meen Moille (cod fillets knapped with a coconut and yogurt sauce), and I finished with a Gajar Ka Halwa (warm carrot pudding).
All the food was delicious. The vegetable fritters were a bit over fried for me, but everything on the sampler we got was excellent and spiced very well. I’m a little sensitive to spicy hot foods, which is why I am a little wary when it comes to Indian food, but all the food I had was spiced just so where I was able to taste it and enjoy it without having to chase every bite with water.
The carrot pudding was a bit unusual, which is probably why I gravitated towards it. It was excellent. The carrot was sweet, and the raisins and nuts made it taste like a warm carrot cake, but without the cake and sweet cream cheese icing.
The only thing that made this meal less than great was the service. It was slow, and I got the feeling our waiter simply forgot about us, which is hard since it wasn’t an exceptionally large establishment or a super busy night. The meal lasted until 9:30ish, and we had a 7pm reservation. I seriously think there was a party who came in after us, ate, and left much earlier than we did. It was a bit strange, and really put a mark on my experience there.
The czar says: Another tasty establishment in Irvington. I can see why it was voted the number 1 town in Westchester. I approve, but just be prepared for the possibility of a longer than anticipated meal.