Dining around the Silicon Valley

We have been having a ball eating out in good Indian resturants. The quality of Indian food here is much better than what we have had in Pittsburgh. The huge Indian community here has to be given credit for this. Only the good places seem to survive here. Some of our friends have given restaurant reviews and we have gone to a few good places accordingly. Chaat Paradise, Mountain View is a well-liked place. We are chaat lovers and we were determined to visit this place.

We decided that our dinner will be all-chaat. I ordered their snack combo that comes with two chaat items, a papad and tea/coffee. I had the dahi batata sev puri and hara bhara bhel. You can even substitute the beverage with chasni or thinned down buttermilk spiced with cumin seeds. My husband ordered the bhelpuri and spicy misal (as an experiment). There is no difference between the two bhels except for the addition of cucumber in mine. The spicy misal is a pav bhaji type of dish served with toasted pav. The misal is a bhaji made of bean sprouts. I was not too impressed with it though. The dishes are quite spicy just as chaat should be.

When 20 month old Aditi refused to eat even a spoon of these dishes, we had to order some bread. I am not a fan of chapathis served at restaurants. So we ordered the makai di roti. It is a speciality of Punjab. It is an unleavened bread made with cornmeal and served with a lot of ghee. Aditi liked it with some raita. Overall nice chaats and fast service. Quite inexpensive, really.