Think about the last four Indian meals you ate. Not where, just what. There is a reasonable chance three of them came from the same part of the same country, and nobody ever mentioned that to you.
This is not a criticism of anyone’s taste. It is a consequence of how the food travelled. A narrow selection arrived in Europe first, it did well, and it became the default. So a search for indian food near me usually returns the same slice of a very large thing, unless you know what else to look for.
What Indian food near me actually covers
Start with Kashmir, in the far north, which almost never appears on menus abroad. Rasoi lists a Yakhni Chicken Shorba, a homestyle soup made from Kashmiri chicken broth, and Mutton Rogan Josh at 25,00, goat braised with garlic, ginger and aromatic spices. That braise is a northern technique built around time rather than heat.
Then Awadhi cooking, from Lucknow, which is court food. Mughlai Chicken at 22,50 uses a cashew and onion gravy. Lucknowi Mughlai Murg at 25,00 is chicken breast stuffed with minced chicken and nuts. Rich, nutty, and structurally different from the tomato based curries most people picture.
Punjab shows up in the breads and the street food: Amritsari Chole Bhature at 15,95, chickpeas in a tangy tomato onion gravy with deep fried bread, and Amritsari Aloo Kulcha stuffed with potato and herbs.
The regions most nearby Indian menus leave out
Here is where the quarter becomes obvious.
Bengal. Bengal Fish Curry at 21,95 uses Catla fish in a Kolkata style curry. Eastern cooking treats fish as the default protein rather than the exception, and it tastes nothing like a curry with prawns added to it.
Hyderabad. Hyderabadi Chicken at 22,50 comes in a mint and cilantro green gravy rather than a tomato base. There is a vegetarian version, Paneer Hyderabadi, at the same treatment. Green gravies are a whole category most people have never ordered.
The south. Chicken 65 at 11,50 is deep fried and seasoned with curry leaves. Malabar Parotta at 3,75 is a layered, flaky flatbread that behaves nothing like naan.
Peshawar and Lahore. Peshawari Prawn Curry at 24,50 and Lahori Ghosht at 25,00, both built on cashew and onion rather than cream and tomato.
There is even an Indo-Chinese section hiding in the soups. Manchow Soup is a genuine hybrid cuisine from Kolkata’s Chinese community, not a fusion invention.
Where vegetarian food near me stops being a substitute
This matters because a lot of people assume vegetarian Indian food is Indian food with something removed.
The vegetarian mains here run from 15,50 to 22,00 and they are not adaptations. Dal Makhni at 15,50 is black lentils and kidney beans slow cooked with butter and cream, a dish with no meat version to convert from. Khatta Meetha Baingan at 16,50 is aubergine in a sweet and sour balance that belongs to western Indian cooking. Baingan Bharta at 16,95 is roasted and mashed eggplant.
Several are marked vegan on request, including the Bhindi Do Pyaza, Mushroom Mutter Masala and Pani Puri. The Mushroom Galouti Kebab at 11,50 is one of the chef’s signature dishes and it is vegetarian.
So the veg section is not a courtesy. It is roughly the same size as the meat sections combined.
How to order Indian food near me without repeating yourself
Pick a region, not a dish. That is the whole method.
Decide before you go that tonight is a Bengali night, or a Hyderabadi one, and then find the things on the menu that belong to it. Regions are internally coherent, so three dishes from one place tell you something that one dish among three others does not.
If you have only ever eaten butter chicken and naan, the shortest route out is the seafood section. Tandoori Pomfret at 13,95 and Tandoori Lasooni Prawns at 14,95 are both chef’s signatures, and both come from a part of the cuisine that rarely makes it abroad.
The breads are worth attention too. Roomali Roti at 6,50 is stretched by hand until it is translucent and cooked on an inverted griddle. That is a technique, not a side order.
What one guest said about the range
Anthony Kremer, in a review published on the restaurant’s site, described going in unfamiliar with contemporary Indian cooking and finding it was not the “typical” Indian restaurant with a menu limited to a Westernised version of the cuisine.
Given what is actually on the menu, that reads as accurate rather than promotional. You can read more about the three friends who started it alongside the other guest accounts.
Finding Indian food near me in the south of Amsterdam
Maasstraat 10 sits in Rivierenbuurt, between De Pijp and Zuidas and near Amsterdam Zuid station. Generally well connected by tram and metro, though check your own route rather than the straight line.
The kitchen runs 4PM to 10PM Monday to Wednesday, and noon to 10PM Thursday to Sunday, with weekend brunch in the midday window. No weekday lunch, which catches people out.
There is a kids section, which is useful to know in advance, and the cocktail list has alcohol free versions of several drinks. Groups of six or more, including company dinners and celebrations, go through a quote request rather than the standard booking form. The restaurant displays a TripAdvisor Travellers’ Choice Winner 2023 badge.
The thing worth taking away
You are not choosing between good Indian food and bad Indian food. Most of the time you are choosing between a quarter of a cuisine and rather more of it, and the menu tells you which one you are looking at before you order anything.
Count the regions named in the dish descriptions. If a menu mentions three or four different places, someone made deliberate choices. If it mentions none, you already know what is coming.
- rasoi
- codyringrose@gmail.com