BreakfastPills

What about Farouk's House of India in Carytown. The more i think about it, the more it seems like there aren't THAT many Indian or Pakistani food placed in Richmond... not nearly as many Thai, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, etc places... or so it seems.

I ate at Chef Mamusu's Africanne on Main (300 E Main St) yesterday for lunch. I had tasted food from the place at the Richmond Vegetarian festival last year, and had been dying to try it since then, but the place always seemed impossible to get in touch with. Thought it had closed until a call yesterday. The restaurant is basically entirely buffet style, where you get all the food you want on a container, and then they weight it. The price was $6 a pound, and I ended up spending almost exactly $7... which includes the weight of the plate. Make no fat jokes! The buffet wasn't in full blast, I'm guessing it is during dinner, but what was available was delicious, for the most part. There were two meat dishes, and all the rest were vegetarian-friedly. The fried trout was dry and a bit bland, and the "famous" macaroni certainly wasn't famous for its flavor or consistency. Other than that, the corn bread was delicious, sweet fried plantains were expectedly yummy, and my favorite thing I tried ended up being the soy chicken and spinach. Nothing was particularly mindblowing about it, but it was a great new experience, and something I'd be willing to try agian, especially at a different time and day since they rotate specials in the buffet. The staff was very friendly too. Oh, and speaking of buffets, I also tried the lunch buffet at Indian K'Raja in the West End shopping strip by Manila Manila, Yen Cheng, and Franco's. It was a flat price of $8 for adults for the buffet. Once again... nothing that completely blew me away, although there was definitevely some stand outs. Not fluent in Indian, or it's cuisine names, most of the names slip me. However, I've eat a reasonable amount of Pakistani food in my day to draw some comparisons. My favorite was Aloo Gobhi, a cauliflower and potato dish that was well-spiced. Other item names I remember trying were idli (steamed rice cake).... kheer (rice pudding dessert).... yep, can't remmeber anymore at the moment. Some of the dishes were far too salty for my taste, but a lot of them seemed less-spiced that I was expecting and hoping for. Overall, it was a great new experience, but I'm not totally compelled to come back too soon or anything. I wonder how much authenticity the food had lost in translation, if any at all. Pakistani cuisine is very similar to a lot of cuisine of India, and most of the Pakistani food that I've tried was, in general, more flavorful and spicey than Indian K'Rajah's. However, I noticed that the majority of the customer were of Indian descent, so perhaps that's a complement to it's fidelity to the original.

Nah, I just e-mailed them, and will call today. Think they'll be a back charge? Yeah, I like your hair TBurban haha. I used to have hair like that. Now mine's twice as long as that.

Nice picture. I don't understand why the Queen's visit was a humongous deal though.

To be completely honest, I'd like to see VCU stop expanding, and for them to fix what's already there. Because it's somewhat broken.

I'll have to nab some pictures of it tomorrow. At this point, I think that VCU should hold it's treaty with Oregon Hill and develop north of cary, or not at all.

Nara sushi has somehow become a better music venue than a sushi restaurant lately. Only advice I can offer is go to either Akida. A friend of mine works in the kitchen in the Fan location, and ensures the quality of the sushi. I've also heard that Ichiban in the West End is pretty awesome. Never been though.

Hahahaha. Blitzkrieg Koala's the name of the zine.

Does anyone have a print copy of last week's (April 25) Style Weekly that they wouldn't mind giving me? Or know how I can nab an old one? I didn't get a chance to pick up a copy, and I just found out last night that I was mentioned in a multiple choice question in this article: http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=14250

Here's a great article I read in Style yesterday that's fairly representative of how I feel about VCU encroaching upon Oregon Hill once again: http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=14249 And a letters section: http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=14267

Okay, I was so confused about all this Starbucks, World Cup, Crossroads Mumbo Jumbo, but I see what's going on here. World Cup is "closing" as in it's changing hands to Crossroads, who will hopefully be a better power at fighting off the new Starbucks. Weird! And annoying! I'm glad to see efforts to curb the "Big Green Monster," but it annoys me that they have to take place in the first place. World Cup was a great place to grab coffee, tea, and food... even vegan... all with FREE WiFi. Starbucks doesn't even begin to fill that void with their pricey wireless internet, and, in my opinion, crappy environment and mediocre coffee. Ironically this was all cleared up to me from this article in Brick Weekly (after our discussion about the subparness of the publication): http://www.brickweekly.com/index.php/slapd...orld_cup_turns/

Disgusting how the gauge the prices isn't it? An Oregon Hill home that I've been looking at built in 1860 or so is priced at 339,000.

Beautiful photos, Cadeho. Is it a church hill home?

I was told that Style Weekly was funded by the Richmond Times Dispatch. I didn't want to believe it, but is it true? Or are they COMPLETELY indepedent from one another?

Yep. Once again I'm mistaken. I was referring to the gymnasium, basketball courts, field, etc, that replaced blocks of housing. I certianly wouldn't say that Oregon Hill is south of the expressway. There is still quite a reasonable amount of Oregon Hill residence north of Cumberland St including a house I'm hoping to invest in. Heck, even the OHHIC's headquarters is located on Cary St. It's revolting how much the property prices and taxes have inflated over the past decade... that, and the possibility of these former working class homes turning into trashy frat houses.

I'm honestly not sure. I passed by it on my way to S Laurel St, and saw a lot of people lined up. I would have LOVED to have gone though! Am I right to assume that he does his stand up much more often in NYC?

I apologize. I got Eugene Trani confused with Edmund Ackel, who I believe was the president before Trani that did most of the damage to Oregon Hill. However, my assertions about the former president's thoughts on Oregon Hill residents come from firsthand experiences of a former Oregon Hill resident that was involved in protecting the Oregon Hill neighborhood from VCU for decades. Ackel apparently would illegally close board meetings to the public to prevent any protest of VCU's descisions. Regardless, I am still very displeased with VCU's destruction of the neighborhood. Many entire blocks of housing have been demolished for the construction of VCU structures like the tennis courts.

My dig is still at this portion of that same article: "VCU said it received an e-mail from the association in November 2006 saying Oregon Hill residents opposed closing Linden Street. Subsequently, the university proceeded with Option 2. Scott Burger, president of the Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association, said the university moved too fast. "We thought there were other options. That's why we never made a blank choice between Option 1 and Option 2," he said. John M. Bennett, VCU's senior vice president for finance and administration, said that once Oregon Hill residents signaled they didn't want Option 1, the university moved ahead." It just sounds like VCU is more than willing to slyly attain their expansion agendas one way or another.

I can't believe I've never visited Zuppa. I guess they wanted to abandon any soup Nazi Seinfeld imagery. Speaking of which, Seinfeld was here on Friday at the Mosque.

I just can't agree that a sports facility should get priority. VCU has little respect for the structures, neighbors, old architecture, and even the neighbors in Richmond. VCU and Oregon Hill were SUPPOSED to have made peace in the 90's, but if this gets allowed, what's going to stop VCU from inching their way farther into the Hill and claiming that it's not technically Oregon Hill. VCU expanded into Oregon Hill back in the day because Trani decided that the community was just a bunch of worthless white trash. VCU was so sly and deceptive about this plan too. They originally offered the Oregon Hill community an idea for how things could be expanded, and the community completely objected. VCU decided that rejection of the original plan was a thumbs-up for their Plan B of destorying the stables... without ever telling the community this back-up plan! Maybe I'm just bitter because of all the crap from I've been dealing the past few weeks with Oregon Hill "student housing" property owners, but I'd much rather see VCU expand east or west than north or south. Actually, I'd rather seem them stop expanding and learn to actually account for the inflated student body that exists there already.

I hope VCU stays the HECK away from those stables. Forget the fact they're not used for anything; Oregon Hill should be left completely alone by VCU, and it was supposed to be that way since the 90's. IF they get these stables, they're going to inch their way even further into Oregon Hill as time progresses. It's already depressing to see what has happened to that neighborhood as it's turned from a working class dwelling with cheap rent for those who need it, to a trendy enclave with ridiculously inflated rent for people who generally don't care about the community.

I went to Mamma Zu on Friday night for dinner with a party of 6. The wait couldn't have been longer than 5 minutes... and Mamma Zu is a place where you need a 15 minute wait minimum, so that everyone can select exactly what they want from the chalkboard before being seated. Our table ended up sharing a large white pizza, roasted red peppers, eggplant permesan, spagetti eggplant, and two spaghetti marinara. The roasted red peppers weren't that great, and I wish I hadn't personally selected the spaghetti marinara due to it, in general, being the most typical and bland item on the menu. However, the food was outstanding as usual... white pizza = heaven. Concluded the night with a nice tiramisu, and thanked the designated driver of the night for not ordering one. Sunday, I also went to Carytown Burgers and Fries for the first time. I think it's a great alternative when there are cravings for your typical fast food fare. Yeah that's right, McDonald's, you don't belong in Carytown! But I'm not going to overglorify the place because it has A LOT of room for improvement. With a quality significantly higher than fast food, the prices are significantly higher, which is understandable. However, some of the items are ridiculously priced, such as the potato salad. I ordered the typical cheeseburger, but the pattie was sandwiched in between an excessive amount of bun.

Thank goodness this crap weather came this weekend and not the 10k weekend.

I assume you were in the W wave? I'll upload my pics later this week, I didn't take any during the race because I was in C wave, though.

Heh, well.. it is Style WEEKLY... heh... but in all seriousness, that's horribly inexcusable of their service. I wonder what they based their decisions on. Perhaps it was one or two good experiences, but I'd hate to say that Style doesn't have the credibility they've built up.