Squid Eats: India House

via India House

Northampton, Massachusetts, population 28,000ish, is easily one of the more charming communities of its size in New England.  Home to Smith College, it's long been a hippie enclave and an important center for LGBTQIA+ life in the region.  It boasts theaters, coffee shops, bookstores and, somewhat surprisingly, loads of Asian restaurants.  India House, just a block off of Main Street, is one of the more established.

The cuisine is North Indian, offering the typical tikkas, masalas and aloos.  The house specialty is a very nice mango curry.  My wife's favorite is saag paneer and theirs was good.  Daughter approved of the mango lassi.  She drank two.  The service at this family-run business is top-notch.  In fact, we discovered that the owner also used to own a restaurant of the same name near where we used to live in Burlington, Vermont.  He tired of the three-hour drive in between so he sold a few years ago.

The cocktail menu is interesting.  All of their specialty drinks are based on traditional ones, included in the parentheses - "Song of Kabir (Old Fashioned)," for instance - but with South Asian twists.  My wife ordered a Midnight in Madras (Manhattan).  It was made with East Indian sherry rather than vermouth and also included elements of coffee, black fig, rhubarb and cascara.  Good, though she felt it could have done without the coffee.

India House is definitely on the pricey side, otherwise definitely worthy of a return visit.