Divine Indian cuisine beyond Davis Square

So it's early in the evening and you're looking to get off campus and get some quality eats before a night out. Indian food has been absent from your itinerary for a long time, but you want to go farther away than Davis. Bombay Club, located in Harvard Square, offers Indian cuisine at reasonable prices. Of course, the location is great, but how was the overall experience?

Bombay Club is located on the second floor of a two-story building. The restaurant is surrounded with glass, making for a superb view of the Harvard Square scene. The decor is well done, with simple yet artistic lighting. Compared to Diva's modern, sleek appearance, Bombay Club is much more elegant in an older, traditional way.

The menu itself offers countless dishes, and includes a ranking of spice-level (measured in peppers on a scale of zero to three) for each item, since most people are not used to the "zing" of Indian culture. The price for the two of us, which included drinks, appetizers, and two entrees, came out to roughly $45.

The restaurant has a variety of tropical drinks, of which we most enjoyed the mango shake. It is delightfully sweet, and sipping on it is a great way to pass time and kill the hunger.

Another common Indian drink is a lassi, which is similar to a shake but has a more sour/sweet taste. Instead of the milk/ice cream component of traditional shakes, yogurt is used. If you are looking for something less fruity, an iced coffee is a wonderful choice as well as the varieties of teas and coffees.

Indian food is well known for its variety of breads, and Bombay Club does an amazing job representing them. A whole section of the menu is dedicated to the different types of breads. We started with Naan, a warm, flat bread with melted butter and served with a side of curry and/or yogurt (raita), and it was great. The texture and flavor of the Naan was a good way to start the meal.

The Chicken Tikka Masala had a nice amount of spice, and the overall flavor was exactly what we had hoped for. The Lemon Lamb was a bit different. The curry was a little spicier than the chicken, but tasted just as good. The meat itself, however, was not as high quality. Every now and then, we encountered small bones in the meat, but aside from that, it too was a great entr?©e.

There is a variety of cultural foods at this eatery, compared to the more restricted cuisines of most Indian restaurants. Bombay Club's menu offers food from all areas of India, not just one specific location. Just like American food, Indian food is very different depending on where in India you may happen to be. Southern food is very different from Northern food, just as in most countries.

One of the most popular dishes is known as dosa, a flat pancake like bread about two feet long filled wrapped around an assortment of stuffings, such as potato and peas. However, if you are a meat lover, Bombay Club also offers flavorful stuffings such as lamb and chicken.

Bombay Club also has a large lunch menu that is similar to the dinner menu, but offers an additional option: the buffet. Instead of just ordering what there is on the menu you can choose the all-you-can-eat buffet, and mix whatever you want in order to have your very own custom-made dish. There is chicken, lamb, naan, vegetarian items, rice khir (a sweet desert similar to what we know as rice pudding), and several curries and sauces. What's better is that a lot of the food available from the menu can be found in the buffet for only $7.95. And, there is almost never a wait at the lunch hour.

After a spicy meal, a sweet dessert is just what you need. The contrast of spice followed by sweet is like none other. For dessert, as with Diva, you cannot go wrong with the Gulab Jamun. They are sweet balls of dough saturated in a sugary liquid. Compared to the Gulab Jamun at Diva, Bombay Club takes the cake. Diva's were good, but Bombay Club's were fantastic. They were warm, and seemed to melt in your mouth. Diva's were cold. All in all it is an acquired taste. But, if you are up for something new, and really sweet, you are bound to love it.