A Story about the Tandoori Club
When I was in college in Singapore, we had an official school 'foodie club' for people who went to nice restaurants together.
I like nice restaurants too, and I went often (especially on dates!). But the kind of food adventure that excited me was of the 'walking through an alley, looking for freshly made naan and keema' variety.
Preferably surrounded by people whose language I didn't speak; ideally, in a place where I have never had any of that food.
My college was situated near Little India, so I went that way all the time. Little India, Singapore, even twenty years ago, contained one of the largest density of great food in a city full of great food. It's even better today. You can get the Singapore branches of some of my favorite south Indian restaurants, like Anjappar, Junior Kuppanna, Murugan Idli, MTR. (I wrote up a current 'Singapore food list' here.)
Around the same period, I was starting to travel to India regularly. Between semesters at my university in Singapore, I was in Kolkata (Calcutta), Bengaluru (Bangalore), Chennai (Madras), Mumbai (Bombay). For four straight years, I spent at least 30 to 120 days each year, in India. I ate really, really well.
That's how my Tandoori Chicken Fan Club began. After class in Singapore, I'd walk over to Little India in search of thosai, idli, keema, paratha, chapati, biryani, tandoori chicken.People started coming with me. It didn't matter where we were going, they just wanted to come and see where I was eating that day.
They jokingly called it the 'Tandoori Chicken Fan Club'. (It was during the period when I was eating at every tandoori chicken stall and restaurant I could find.)
While we've all disbanded and gone our separate ways, a few of us did regroup a decade ago in northern Europe, where I again led food-based trips around Copenhagen, Malmö and Helsinki (why there? We were just all in that part of the world at that time, for work / school). That part of my life taught me something important: people like eating with me! I can write about this stuff!
Indeed, I did that for quite some time, Through the last years of college, I found myself writing chef profiles, restaurant recommendations, even editing and photographing other people's cookbooks. My first jobs out of college were food and tech adjacent. I worked on a Michelin Guide competitor's website, and then I moved to Dubai to work on 'food media trade magazines', mostly assembling food magazines and books for high end hotels and restaurants.
While I don't consider myself to have been fully involved in the so-called 'food media biz', that experience showed me what interests me about 'food' is the people, politics and stories behind them.
So, I will probably never have anything to sell you. Maybe I just want a virtual version of the Tandoori Chicken Fan Club (tandoori cauliflower or tandoori paneer also possible for vegans). I want to start linking to delicious recipes, such as Kongunadu Cauliflower Curry and Erode Nallampatti style chicken roast, which features my favorite Indian regional cuisine (mostly in and around Coimbatore and Erode in Tamil Nadu) that is largely unavailable outside of South India, Malaysia and Singapore. I may share restaurant recommendations. I might host a cooking club, where can ask me questions about how to make something.
Personally, I'm past the chef-driven, SEO-based food media as popularized by those New York based food media outlets. I don't feel like I eat like them, nor do I want to. I'm a fan of what I think is the new world of food media: intimate, curated content, a bit like what the Lau family does with their Canto Cooking Club.
Mostly, I'm figuring out how to share my giant, outsized interest in sniffing out delicious food with the world.
As I settle in into my sixth year in San Francisco, and the United States, I'm also starting to see that the food cultures I absorbed living in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and elsewhere, are things and experiences which have shaped me. Like this food / travel video I once made, of the food I ate in Sana'a, Yemen.
So, welcome to my tandoori chicken / cauliflower club!
Tandoori kebabs and veg dishes in Singapore and San Francisco Bay Area
Most of these restaurants will also have a veg version of the dishes, such as paneer or cauliflower, but vegan is not necessarily available (paneer is much more common; also a lot of North Indian cooking uses a lot of cream and yogurt).
- Singapore: Usman, the one that started it all (the one I went to the most!), Tandoori Corner, Masala Tandoor, Thevar (for really special occasions)
- San Francisco: Red Chilli, Shalimar, Aaha Indian Cuisine
- Hayward: Wah Jee Wah
- Fremont: Keeku da Dhaba (the food truck most like the Indian kebabs I love in Northern Indian cities, check their Instagram for opening times as it's more sporadic compared to restaurants), Mirchi, Bundoo Khan, Peshawari Kabab
- South Bay: Shah Restaurant, Shan
Tandoori glossary
Frequently encountered terms relating to tandoori items, and what they are.
Tandoor: a traditional oven used in Middle East and South Asia to make breads and meats and vegetables
Tandoori chicken: self-explanatory, the one you'll most commonly see at restaurants in the West. A reddish chicken leg or chicken breast, grilled in a tandoor
Chicken tangdi or tangdi kebab or murgh tangdi kebabk: tandoori chicken drumstick, usually marinated in yogurt and spices. Something I always order
Chicken / fish / paneer tikka: tikka means 'bits and pieces', so usually bits and pieces of those things marinated in yogurt and spices
Seekh kebab: a sausage-like kebab made of ground meat, usually chicken or mutton
Reshmi / malai kebab: chunks of chicken marinated in cream, yogurt, cashews and almonds
Boti kebab: usually boneless pieces of chicken or mutton
Less commonly seen, but if you see these on a menu this place is probably really serious about tandoori and kebab items:
Galauti kebab (or tunday kebab): a Lucknowi / Awadhi specialty kebab made of ground mutton, green papaya, spices, coated in a batter of chickpea flour, egg, and green chilies then fried. Spectacular, if you ever come across one
Chapli kebab: a patty shaped kebab, usually made with mutton but also beef and chicken
Recipes I love
- No tandoor required chicken tangdi (drumstick) (Hindi, with English subs)
- No tandoor required paneer tikka (Hindi, with English subs)
- 'Military style' chicken biryani (No audio, only English captions)
- Muttai puli kuzhambu, or egg curry in tamarind sauce (No audio, only English captions)
- Madurai butter beans kuruma (English, with English captions)