WFXX | Mass Food & Wine

Mattar Paneer at Surya Indian Cuisine on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester

We are regulars at Surya Indian Cuisine. My daughters, notoriously fussy eaters at home, love everything about this restaurant. Chicken pakora (basically a chicken tender), rice, and naan bread make a sweet meal for a couple of elementary school girls, who also love the never-ending stream of Bollywood videos playing on a pair of flat screen televisions. I write this because many people are intimidated by Indian food, thinking that the heat will be more than their palette can handle. Trust me. If my daughters enjoy the food, it won’t be too hot for you, provided you order your entrée “mild.” Take my matter paneer, for example. A rich, creamy sauce, masterfully blending a myriad of spices, covers squares of semi-soft Indian cheese and peas. (For connoisseurs of Indian cuisine, Surya uses a bit more cream in their dishes than other Indian restaurants, making them a little heavier than the same dish served at other restaurants.) Serve the matter paneer over rice and mop up the extra sauce with bread. Flavorful, yes. Spicy? Not really. If you order the dish “medium,” however, the flavor of the cream recedes and the intensity of the spices increases, and the heat of the dish can be felt. Order this dish “hot” and, to my taste buds, the heat becomes intense, for me too intense to enjoy the flavor. But the choice is yours. Order the dish mild, medium, or hot. Heck, you can order the dish with chicken instead of cheese, if you like. The Surya kitchen is happy to prepare the dish to fit your palette. And you won’t be disappointed. -JD

Chicken Vindaloo from Surya Indian Cuisine

There are many italian restaurants on Shrewsbury Street or restaurant row as some call it, but hidden a bit back from a casual drive down Shrewsbury Street is Surya Indian Cuisine – a locally owned, Indian restaurant. Normally when eating at an Indian restaurant I always seem to want to share my dishes so I could sample a bit from everyone but this time around decided to stick with one dish and an appetizer all to myself. I enjoy Samosas which are fried or baked pastries with a savory filling – this time I went with the Lamb Samosas. I was served 2 large fried samosas and while the dough/pastry tasted great, the filling was too dry for my taste buds. I had to reach for the side sauces (chutney) to enjoy them.

For a main dish, I went with a basic indian dish that I normally get at other places—Chicken Vindaloo—which gives me an opportunity to compare it to other Indian restaurants I have been to. Normally this is one of the spicier indian dishes, but here at Surya, they give you the option on mild or spicy. Since I love spice, I went with the spicy. Well, be prepared, it was spicy, spicy and maybe a bit too spicy for me. When the dish was set down in front of me, I was surprised by the large portion and even happier to see nice big pieces of white chicken in plenty of curry sauce but a little surprised to see large chunks of potatoes included. Traditionally potatoes are not included in this dish but they were tasty and cooked well. Overall, the dish was good but with the amount of spiciness it did over power the nice spices that you would normally taste in Vindaloo. To help offset some of the spiciness, they did serve many different side sauces that were shared by the table including Raita. Raita is basically a yogurt based sauce which when eaten with spicy foods helps to mellow the spiciness. In this case it helped me end the meal with a pleasant experience. -MM