Location 107 ave 101 st, and 97th St in Chinatown
Hot topic: Chicken Curry
I've been to Padmanadi's several times in the past, but this was the first time checking out their new location on 101 st. Once again I had a fabulous meal, never disappoints.
For starters, Padamandi is a full vegan restaurant, meaning no meat, dairy, animal products, and even no onion and garlic. Their 'meat' dishes are made from a mix of wheat gluten and mushroom, something along those line. However, it still all tastes just like meat somehow. So while there is no meat or dairy in any of the food, you do not feel like your missing out on meat whatsoever because of these tasty but kind of funny looking 'meat' chunks. They have a substitute for chicken, beef, and mutton.
The menu is sort of an Indonesian-Chinese fusion. So while they serve Indonesian food like nasi goreng (friend rice), bihun goreng, curry chicken, coconut rice, some veggie dishes, and specialty drinks, they also serve a whole lot of Chinese type items like spring rolls, kung pow chicken, stir fry veggie dishes, hot and soup soup, wonton soup etc.
Today we ordered the Dinner for Two (32$) which came with (4) spring rolls, soup of the day (big bowl of hot and sour soup), rice, stir fry veggies and mushrooms, curry mutton, and dessert of the day (rice pudding). For 32$ it was a great deal. They also have Dinner for 4, 6, 8 etc etc with more options to choose from. I had initially wanted the curry chicken and asked if we could substitute the curry mutton for it but they said they didn't do substitutions. That was fine though because the curry mutton ended up tasting pretty much like the curry chicken. So I was happy :)
The soup and spring rolls came out promptly. The spring rolls were nice and hot and were served with a side of plum sauce. The soup was very very good. I usually don't like hot and sour soup but this was thick, spicy, and had lots of mushrooms and tofu. It had a spicy kick to it that cooled down a little while after, I thought this was nice. The veggies and two individual bowls of rice came after that. The vegetable dish had cabbage, carrots, mushrooms, bean curd, tofu in it and was cooked in a light sauce. The sauce was light and not overpowering which was a nice change from those sloppy thick sauces vegetable stir fry is usually made with. The curry mutton came out a while later and was full of 'mutton' chunks, diced potato's, and cauliflower. I don't even know how to describe the curry, it was just really good. The 'mutton' was chewy and tasted great and I loved the tender potato's and cauliflower that were soaked in the curry. After everything was finished up our waitress brought out our rice pudding. Each bowl was drizzled in some sort of grape/black currant tasting sauce, garnished with a grape and topped with cinnamon sugar. While I found the rice pudding a little more watery than what I typically liked, the cinnamon flavor really came through and made the pudding a great finish to our meal.
Overall I was very happy and left satisfied with my meal. I will certainly be making another trip down there very soon.
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| Hot and sour soup with spring rolls |
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| Cute and clean menu |
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| Veggies |
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| There are lots of tables inside |
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| Curry mutton |
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| The restaurant is very nice and bright |
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| Rice pudding |
