Basmati cafe, Ottawa

Basmati Indian Restaurant
After reading good reviews of this restaurant and seeing how close it was to the hotel, we decided we would do our first dinner in Ottawa here. Well . . . the place was completely empty. It’s a small, 9 table, restaurant, brightly painted but with cheap tables and chairs and a little lunch counter with stools. Two women were working behind the counter (well, they weren’t working but they were standing there). They seemed glad to see us and told us to seat ourselves. The menus were the little paper ones you get for take out. And on the walls are pictures of all the foods you can order (they do NOT look good in these pictures. If I didn’t know Indian food those pictures would be enough to make me leave). Entrees were about $8 and included salad and rice but which were mostly rice. This worked out nicely for Asha who likes rice, but not so nicely for me because I’m not so fond of it. Asha had butter chicken and I had Saag paneer. Both were fine but a bit sweet and cream dominated. The naan was freshly cooked but tasted cloyingly of baking soda.
We chatted with one of the women who was from Iraq. She had fled Iraq in 2002 right before the war started and had ended up in Canada without any relatives or friends. She has her masters in German and had lived in Germany seven years. I didn’t ask her how she felt serving Indian food in a run-down establishment. She said that three of her family members had been killed in the war and that there wasn’t a family in Iraq that could say their family didn’t have at least one death. Wasn’t much we could say to that.

I do have to add that a strange set of clients came through the place while we were there. First came a man who said he wanted one naan and then when he was told it was $1.75, he ran out. Then came a couple. the woman was enormous and the man tiny and they were clearly mentally challenged. They ran right to the soda fridge, grabbed cokes, opened them and sat down and started drinking. then a group of four college students, I guess, came in wearing Kilts and asking the proprietors if they ordered over the phone could they use the student discount. The proprietors had no idea what they were talking about, so they talked louder and gestured to a sign in the window saying "student discount honored". The people working conferred and nodded and shook their heads and the students repeated their questions and then they left.