Ayesha, The Curries of Suwon Part 3

Here is my third installment in “The Curries of Suwon” series, in which I am attempting to give every Indian/Nepalese/Pakistani restaurant in Suwon a fair shake. In part 1, I reviewed Taj A Taste of India in Yeongtong. It was nice, but a bit over-priced for the common man. In part 2, I went to Kasam at Suwon station. I asserted my belief that it was the best curry in town and brashly implied that all the people who like the big curry joint wouldn’t know a good curry if it smacked them in the mouth. Now we’ve come to Ayesha.

Ayesha is one of the under-appreciated curry options in Suwon and I think it’s poor location could play a part. Most people I know didn’t even know it existed. I’ve only been a few times and it’s always been good. Even 10 Magazine gave it a positive review a while back. I went last week with a couple of friends and we were the only people there. The decor is pretty minimal and it can only seat about 12-14 people, but the food is amazing (probably because it can only seat 12-14 people). One of the Kasam diehards said that he believes it to be better than Kasam, but I just think it’s number 2. The menu is pretty standard and has an equal number of vegetarian and meaty options. I got the Chicken Makhani and asked them to make it a bit more spicy for me and boy did they. My friend got the mutton curry and said it was great. The food is really nice and the flavors are more complex than most of the other places in town, but the downside is that it’s a bit greasy and the portions are a bit smaller than the other places as well. One of the best things I liked the most is that they avoid the pitfall of making their curries sweet. You can have sugar in a curry, but it shouldn’t taste like candy. The naan that you get is massive and has a nice char that really sets it apart from some of the other naans I’ve had. We split a basmati rice, which was really cheap, but you really don’t have a lot of curry left over to mix it with. The price was definitely right though. You could have a curry and a naan for 10,000won which is not bad at all.

As other places will mention, you can also buy some dry goods from their little mini mart that takes up a side of the restaurant. So you can get your basic lentils, ghee, microwave meals, spices, and even lamb. I really intend to go here more often. The more popular places will be open indefinitely, but it’s the little hole in the wall places that need to be frequented in order to preserve uniqueness and variety in the city. Three years ago, the restaurant I now loathe was pretty crummy and no one ever went, but eventually it grew to be “the” curry place. Anyway, you can go to those big places any time you want, but help out the little guy too and be glad you did, because the food is great.

To get there, you can cross the street on the bridge from AK plaza and go right. Take a left at the U+ shop. It’s also the alley behind the bus stop. The 10 magazine article also has directions, so check there if I’m not being clear enough. I’m putting a picture of what the street looks like and the shop front. Ayesha also has a blog that hasn’t been updated since 2009 if you want to see some pictures of the interior. I highly encourage you to try this place and preserve the uniqueness of Suwon’s curry scene.

Taj: A Taste of India in Yeongtong, Suwon

There’s a lot of great Indian food in Suwon, about 10 different restaurants last time I checked. There’s a place not 3 blocks from me in Yeongtong called Taj: A Taste of India. It’s a chain and they’ve got 4 of them in Yeongtong, Bundang, Myeongdong, and Gangnam. You can visit the website to look at the menu and get directions. I swore I went to one in Busan, but it could just be a copycat restaurant. A popular thing to do in Korea is to open up a restaurant with an identical menu, charge the same prices, and serve lower quality food. For instance, there’s another Indian restaurant in Yeongtong that has almost the exact same menus as Taj, down to the font.

If you were to go to Taj, I would HIGHLY recommend you only go during lunch since that’s the only time it’s affordable. It’s 11,000won for lunch at the one near me and you get two curries, a naan, and a “salad” (shredded cabbage with yogurt as the dressing). At dinner time, though, prepare for the fleecing of your life. I went with a lady friend and we ordered the dinner vegetarian set for two (I really wanted the one with meat)…so we went with that because it was 38,500won (about 35$), little did we know that when you order the set for two that you pay twice the price. We got coke as well, so it was 83,000won (74$). As far as I can tell, the amount of food you get for a one person set and a two person set is exactly the same except you get two soups and two teas. So it was the 2nd most expensive meal I’ve ever had in Korea. Was it good? Yes. Was it worth it? NO. I’m still a bit miffed about it, to be honest. It’s definitely not like the other Indian/Nepalese restaurants in the area, which are priced to be affordable enough for migrant workers to eat at as well.

The restaurant itself looks super modern and clean, a far cry from the utilitarian furnishings of some of the other Indian places I love in the area. We started with a tomato and mushroom soup. I hate mushrooms and don’t care for tomato soup, but it was one of the best soups I’ve ever had. They then brought us some aloo chana chaat, which is sort of like a cold potato, tomato, chickpea and raw onion salad thing; it went largely untouched. The next course was a thing of fried paneer with mint sauce (great!), some tandoori mushrooms, and tandoori potatoes stuff with peas and spices. The only problem with this course is that it’s a massive plate with not a lot on it, so it kind of falls short in the presentation category (see pictures below). By this time, you sort of stop being hungry, which is a shame because that’s when the curry comes out. They gave us a mixed vegetable curry (meh), a paneer mumtaz (which we agreed tasted a lot like jajangmyeon), and a dal makhani (which is one of my all time favorites). Maybe it says more about me that I prefer one of the most basic and bland curries available on any Indian menu, but the paneer mumtaz was pretty salty and did taste pretty similar to one of my least favorite Korean foods. The mixed veg curry was overpowered by the green beans, which is fine, just not my favorite. The Dal Makhani, however, was really one of the better ones I’ve ever had. It was perfectly seasoned and the texture was great. They served this with garlic naan, plain naan, and basmati rice with peas (peas pulao). Can I mention what a bad idea raw onions are at a restaurant that obviously set up to be date-like?

At this point, we’d been there quite a while so were looking to go for coffee, but we still had to wait for our tea. We told them not to worry about the tea, but they insisted we have something so they gave us a lassi, which was spot on. Needless to say, I was incredibly shocked by the price and will never eat there for dinner again. Even if you were to just get a curry, naan, and a drink, it would still run you about 30,000won a person. 30,000won a person is way too much to spend on Indian food in a town with 8 other places charging less than half that. I typically wouldn’t expect to pay more than 13,000. It’s not to say that the food isn’t excellent, but it’s not twice as good as the other places. I would eat here all the time if it were reasonably priced. Perhaps they could do themselves a favor by explaining the food more. Where is it sourced from? Is it fresh? Why am I paying this much for Indian food? They’re doing quite fine for themselves though; it was packed and we got the last table. I’ll try to post about some of the good places to go.

Directions: It’s across the street from the Yeongtong Post office on the 2nd floor in the same building as Aqua (the loudest bar I ever walked past) above the GS 25.