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Naatiya Indian Restaurant
8 Mountain Ave.
Bloomfield
Phone: (860) 726-0126
Web: http://www.naatiyarestaurant.com
Price: $2.49 (salad) to $19.99 (entrée)
Recommended Dish: Kotthu Paratha
Rating: 3 to 4 Stars |
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The name itself brings to mind graceful dance
postures and movements that take one right back to ‘swades;’
not that it would immediately conjure the smells and
tastes of sumptuous food. New to the community, Naatiya
tries to bring the best of Indian cuisine to the area.
More specifically, it’s a place that could be counted on
for South Indian delicacies including 16 different kinds
of dosa and uthappam, nearly half a dozen rice dishes, a
smattering of Indo-Chinese selections, and an array of
15 appetizers ranging from chaat to chicken lollipop.
I visited the restaurant twice – once for lunch and
once for dinner. During my first visit, I was thrilled
to see kothu paratha on the menu. For the uninitiated,
it is a delicacy that originated in the roadside dhabas
of the national highways in the south of India.
Basically, parathas are shredded into small pieces and
sautéed with green chillies, onion and a choice of egg,
chicken or lamb. I ordered the egg version and it was
great; the portion size was huge and even a glutton like
me could not finish it. I would have personally liked it
spicier with more green chillies but it was certainly
very good as it was.
An appetizer I tried during both my visits was the
lasoni gobi, cauliflower cooked in a tangy garlic sauce.
Again, the portion size is quite big and can be shared
between a couple or even three people. It reminds one of
the gobi Manchurian popular in Indo-Chinese fusion
cuisine but is distinctly different.
Another main course dish I tried at dinner was the
chili paratha. It did not quite make it to the level of
the kothu paratha. I found it greasier and less
palatable. The rest of my family tried out panner
paratha, Mysore masala dosa, adai aviyal, raitha,
uthappam and channa masala. All of these were very good
but the channa masala was excellent. My kids loved the
mango lassi.
Overall, the choice of items on the menu is quite
diverse and there is a great variety both among
vegetarian and meat dishes. The food is basically fresh
and is of above average quality. The ambience is
adequate for casual dining. The staff is friendly and
receptive to dietary restrictions and special needs. The
location is convenient, right in the heart of Bloomfield
center with easy access to companies in the area and to
the highway. A few of my American friends who tried the
lunch buffet loved it, but I haven’t tried it yet.
I’d give the restaurant a 3-to-4 star rating and
welcome Naatiya to the community. Hope they can deliver
on their strengths and improve on their weaknesses over
time.
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BOOK REVIEW: THE ART
OF CHOOSING
By Sujata Srinivasan
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The
Art of Choosing
Author: Sheena Iyengar
Publisher: Twelve, 2010
Price: $25. 99 Hardcover
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I felt
“curiouser and curiouser” like Alice in Wonderland
when I first walked into an American grocery store.
Oh, the possibilities! Aisles and aisles of cereals
with a myriad combinations: White sugar, cane sugar,
no sugar, honey, maple, nuts, rice, wheat, fruit,
chocolate, frosting, bran, vanilla, puffed, flat,
round, grainy. The choices quite positively made me
dizzy. Had I known about Sheena Iyengar’s research
on choice back then, I would have been cognizant of
what all behavior psychologists know – that most
people are thrown out of their comfort zone if the
number of choices they have are more or less than
seven, plus or minus two.
Skeptical? Not if you’re a top exec at Fidelity
Research or McKinsey & Co., who like lots of people,
ended up telling Iyengar about a famous jam study
that led them to think about how much product
variety was too much. Funnily, it was Iyengar who
first conducted the study.
Here’s the skinny on the frequently-quoted study:
Researchers set up a table of jam samples at an
upscale food store in Menlo Park. At periodic
intervals, the researchers, who pretended to be
store employees, switched between six and 24 flavors
of jam in the display/sampling area. They found that
shoppers were more inclined to stop by and taste
when the choices were more – 24. But here’s what
happened after the sampling. Shoppers who sampled
the spread of six jams were the ones who ended up
buying the jam: a whopping 30 percent versus just
three percent. In this case, less actually seemed to
be more.
In her recently released book “The Art of Choosing,”
Iyengar, a psychologist and professor at Columbia
University’s School of Business, explores the
mechanisms of choice at an age where consumers have
virtually unlimited options. She talks about how
choice is the “lingua franca of America” and how
cultural differences affect choices. But the most
fascinating idea – at least to me – was the
relationship she establishes between what/how we
choose and who we are.
You’ve chosen to read this review of a book on
choice. How many other choices have you made today –
from the news stories you’ve read and the clothing
you’re wearing to the cereal you picked up on your
way home from work? If you’re like me, a creature of
habit, you’d visit the same websites each day (The
Wall Street Journal, BBC, Forbes India), flip
through the same magazines (The Economist, Time,
People), wear your favorite color often (red), and
reach for the familiar cereal at the grocery story
(Raisin Bran with zero percent milk). At the Indian
restaurant, my husband orders sada dosa and I, idli.
So in many ways, I think once you’re past the deluge
of options thrown at you by marketers, you settle
into a comfortable rhythm of familiarity.
When I met Iyengar at Columbia University in May to
interview her for Forbes India, we talked about
choice and the notion of choice that marketers very
cleverly plant in the consciousness of consumers
through the tactic of product positioning, pricing
and “puffery” or buzzwords.
Iyengar writes that it’s not in the interest of
megacorporations to create variety in products.
“Rather, they aim to maximize differences in image,
thereby generating the illusion of variety and
attracting the greatest diversity of consumers at
the least cost to themselves.” For example, she
writes how L’Oreal targets different customers
through two of its very different brands – Lancome
and Maybelline.
She argues that companies like L’Oreal get away with
positioning the same product at a lower and a higher
price point because they tap effectively into what
drives consumer behavior. If customers with fatter
wallets don’t mind paying more for the notion of
using a premium product, why not charge them more?
“…If choice is about freedom and exercising control,
are we betraying ourselves by pretending that we
make meaningful choices as consumers?” she asks.
Iyengar’s style of writing is engaging and humorous
and she discusses extensive academic research in the
fascinating language of choice. She writes in the
prologue: “Choice, ranging from the trivial to the
life-altering, in both its presence and its absence,
is an inextricable part of our life stories.”
Iyengar views choice as the roadmap for life. When
she was 13, her father dropped dead on the roadside
of a sudden heart attack. Soon after, a rare form of
retinal degeneration left her blind by the time she
reached high school. But unlike her immigrant Sikh
parents, Iyengar was drawn more toward the idea of
choice rather than destiny. “I was born into the
[American] dream, and I think I understood it better
than my parents did, for I was more fluent in
American culture. In particular, I realized that the
shining thing at its center – so bright you could
see it even if you, like me, were blind – was
choice,” she writes.
Iyengar’s objective in writing this book is a
mammoth one: To help us understand how the choices
we make have brought us from the past to the
present, and will carry us from the present to the
future. She writes: “…Choosing helps us create our
lives. We make choices and are in turn made by them.
Science can assist us in becoming more skillful
choosers, but at its core, choice remains an art. To
gain the most from it, we must embrace uncertainty
and contradiction.”
And now, I share with you, my reader, what Iyengar
wrote on the title page of my copy of her book:
“Enjoy choosing. Choose well.”
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