Josh was running an errand near my office so we decided to meet up for a quick lunch, as I was desperately eager to take a break from work. We ended up Indus Express due to its proximity to my office, and because it would be fast since we both had a lot to do back at work.
We went with our usual order of a naan sandwich and a chaat. This time we opted for the basil chicken tikka naan roll. They definitely stuff a lot of filling into the naan but the flavors are a bit muddled. I couldn’t detect much basil taste, just a lot of different spices. We asked for the sandwich to be spicy hot, and it definitely delivered in that regard. My sinuses were cleared after eating that sandwich. The order came with a small pile of french fries (regular straight fries with some random bits of curly fries – weird!) and a sad little side salad that we pretty much ignored.
Basil chicken tikka naan roll
For our chaat, we debated between alu chaat and chicken chaat. Josh was lobbying for the chicken, which was described on the menu as boneless pieces of broiled chicken and sounded kind of boring to me. I pushed for the alu chaat, which listed spiced potatoes and chickpeas in the description. I thought the spiced potatoes would be seasoned like the filling of a samosa, or the kind that dosas are wrapped around. I won the debate but boy, was I in for a huge disappointment. The potatoes were basically boiled and unseasoned, and very unpleasant. Biting into a piece of plain waxy boiled potato, barely cooked through, is not appetizing at all. Which is too bad because the standard chaat toppings of mango, tomato, cucumber, onion, and the yogurt and tamarind sauces are really good. They just weren’t enough to hide the bland boringness of plain boiled potato chunks. Ugh. I definitely won’t order this again, and I should have deferred to Josh and gotten the chicken chaat instead. Plain broiled chicken is WAY tastier than plain boiled potato.
Disappointing alu chaat with bland, almost raw potatoes
Overall this was not the greatest trip to Indus Express, though it’s not somewhere that we go often. There’s much better Indian food in the area but this is always an option when we’re looking for something super quick. We were in and out of there in 20 minutes, and I was soon back at my desk slaving away again.
Indus Express
48 West 48th St. between 5th and 6th Ave.
New York, NY