Thursday, May 06, 2004

What to order at the Indian seafood restaurant Fish N' More?

Shrimp masala and saffron-pistachio ice cream but watch those other dishes.


So the shrimp masala at Fish N' More isn't really even Indian seafood. It's a fusion of mogul spices and seafood from the Gulf of Mexico, I muse aloud to Vaswani.

"Not having eaten there, I can't really say. But it sounds like a hybrid to me," she chuckles. Hey, what do you expect from an Indian seafood restaurant with a Persian owner and a Mexican cook?

The "half and half" is a sundae of saffron-pistachio ice cream with frozen rose-water syrup and squiggly frozen noodles poured over the top. The flowery aroma and thick texture makes this South Asian ice cream sundae a lot more exciting than the ones at Dairy Queen.

"Indian ice cream is different from American ice cream," Suneeta Vaswani tells me. "It's made without eggs." The vegetarian ice cream is made by thickening milk through long, slow cooking. The reduction process also increases the proportion of milk sugar and hence the sweetness. Indian ice cream tastes a lot like India's flavored milk-fudge candies.

This is the best ice cream sundae I've eaten in years. But the saffron and rose-water ice cream is abhorrent to one of my dining companions. "It tastes like soap," she says.

Fish N' More
Shrimp masala: $7.99
Half and half sundae: $3.29
Where: 5702 Hillcroft, 832-252-7787. Hours: 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.

No comments: