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To all those querulous bozos who moan and whine endlessly that Times Square in NYC has nothing to offer except endless stores, teeming crowds and acres of boring billboards, we offer the following pictures taken on June 15, 2011:
Om Shanti Om
Boy, She Sure is a Charming Sight
Look Up to This Beauty in Times Square NYC
Pretty Women on a Billboard
‘Posterior’ Angle of a Charmer
Is her Name Lady Gulliver?
Related Stories:
What’s the Big Deal about Times Square?
Floyd Cardoz, who was the chef and partner at the failed Indian restaurant Tabla in New York City, is the new Top Chef Master in the third season of Bravo TV Networks competition.
Cardoz’ winning meal included a South Indian favorite Upma, a rice-crusted snapper in a fennel-laced broth and Rendang, an Indonesian beef stew.
“You cooked a meal that was deeply skilled and very, very memorable,” said judge James Oseland, Editor-in-Chief of Saveur magazine (the other judges were food writers Gael Greene and Ruth Reichl).
Floyd Cardoz, who hails from Bombay and Goa, pledged his $100,000 prize to cancer research.
Tabla, where Cardoz worked for a dozen years, was one of those fusion restaurants that served bastardized Indian cuisine. You know stuff like Stone Church Farms Normandy Duck ($28), Elysian Fields Lamb Loin & Short Rib ($32) and Roasted Poulet Rouge Chicken ($26).
Which sane Indian restaurant serves Stone Church Farms Normandy Duck, Elysian Fields Lamb Loin & short Rib and Roasted Poulet Rouge Chicken.
No wonder Tabla failed.
Failed Tabla Chef Floyd Cardoz Blah-blahing about his Win
Related Stories:
Tabla NYC Kisses the Dust; Closing Dec. 30
After our favorite Indian cuisine, we suppose we’ve tried Mexican cuisine the most.
Quesadillas, Burritos, Enchiladas, Tacos, Guacamole, Nachos, Margaritas and what-not Mexican food and drinks have pandered to our gargantuan appetite.
So, when a new Mexican restaurant La Quetzalteca opened up on RT-13 in Smyrna, DE it didn’t take much persuasion to heave ourselves there. Of course, we’d been to La Tonalteca in Dover several times but new is new, right?
When we walked in around 11:30AM, the restaurant was packed, mostly with young women. We had a wait of about six minutes before a table opened up. La Quetzalteca is in the building formerly occupied by the Wayside Inn, right behind the bus stop.
Since it’s a Mexican restaurant, it wasn’t long before someone deposited the obligatory basket of Nachos along with a bottle of tangy red salsa on our table.
After crunching into those Nachos, we moved on to our appetizer, Jalapeño Peppers. At La Quetzalteca, these are deep fried Jalapeños stuffed with yellow cheese and served with lettuce and house dressing.
Notwithstanding the terror-inducing name of Jalapeño Peppers, they were not hot but tasty since the peppers seem to have gone through some marination. The house dressing, whatever it was, turned out to be delicious.
Jalapeño Peppers at La Quetzalteca Smyrna
Chicken Quesadillas came with Guacamole, Sour Cream Lettuce and tomatoes.
Very filling and with a bit of those fiery sauces (on the table) inside the Quesadillas, we were on a merry trip.
The portions were generous for $5.40.
Chicken Quesadilla
Vegetarians need not despair at La Quetzalteca.
There’s a Vegetarian Lunch option available for $5.35. It comes with a Bean Burrito and Cheese Enchilada with sour cream, lettuce and tomato sauce.
We added a dash of Green Chili Sauce and Hot Sauce and, boy, was it delicious. But the promised tomato slice was missing. 
Bean Burrito & Cheese Enchilada
For those of you, who feel the heat-level in the food is not living up to your expectation there are a bunch of hot sauce bottles on the table.
Go for it. But do keep a napkin handy for the sweat that’ll soon pour out.
Various Mexican Hot Sauces
We topped off our lunch with the Mexican dessert Sopapilla consisting of eight crisp. flour tortillas cut in pieces, covered with butter and honey and sprinkled with cinnamon powder.
Oh, there was a thin chocolate syrup and cream with a cherry in the middle.
Yummy!
Mexican Dessert Sopapilla
No, we didn’t try the Margaritas during our recent visit.
But we promise you it won’t be long before the next visit. After all, Lime Margaritas are only $2.99 on Wednesdays. 
As with a lot of restaurants featuring Third World cuisine, hygiene is deficient at La Quetzalteca too. Our table was sticky, had a couple of stains and there was an ant briskly marching around in circles.
Our bespectacled young hostess came over and declared, Oh, I don’t want to kill it and then proceeded to do exactly that with her fingers! Really.
Well, we’ve seen worse things at Indian restaurants. But if you’re the finicky kind, stay at home and eat a TV dinner.
Also, we were charged for some other dessert (a buck more) than what we ordered. After we pointed out the error, our ant-killer hostess fixed it but no apologies were rendered.
No, Mexican food is not in the same class as Indian cuisine. At least, whatever Mexican food we’ve had so far. Indian food has a richer variety and more intense flavors.
By the way, if you are going to La Quetzalteca for lunch we’d recommend you head there around 12:30PM so that you don’t have to wait for a table.
Its sticky tables, ants and service snafus aside, we still thought La Quetzalteca was value for money, particularly the lunch menu.
SearchIndia.com recommends La Quetzalteca in Smyrna, DE.
Psychopathic killer Kyung-chul fondling his au naturel victim’s arms: Your skin is so soft. Looks like it’ll be easy.
Bleeding, battered young woman Joo-yeo: Please don’t kill me.
Kyung-chul: Why not?
Joo-yeo cries: I’m pregnant. Please, let me live.
Kyung-chul pauses for a second, lifts his hand high and brings the knife down swiftly, brutally chopping off Joo-yeo’s hands, head, ear and hacking the girl to pieces.
- Just one of many chilling scenes from I Saw the Devil
To all you retarded SOBs that dare tell us, even if only every once in a while, that Indians too make good movies, we say to all ye putzheads: Watch South Korean film-maker Kim Ji-woon’s movies.
And soon you’ll all be looking for long ropes that can withstand your bloated egos torsos.
Since a lot of Indian movie buffs are ignoramuses who think the world begins with Bollywood’s ‘Ready‘ criminal Salman Khan and ends with the Kollywood ‘Kaavalan‘ Vijay, some education is in order.
Kim Ji-woon is a 47-year-old film-director and screenplay writer, deservedly acclaimed for the high quality of his movies.
The Korean director has developed a rather boring, predictable record of picking up awards/nominations galore each time he puts out a movie.
A few months back, we watched his The Good, the Bad and the Weird and relished it a lot.
So, we were more than eager to watch his latest movie I Saw the Devil, reports of gory, chilling violence notwithstanding.
I Saw the Devil has recently made it to Netflix in both DVD and Instant Play formats, which means you can watch it on your PC, laptop, iPad or on TV with a Roku-like device (on an iPad 2, I Saw the Devil looks stunning).
So, the other day we fixed ourselves a large drink and sat down to see I Saw the Devil:
‘Damn Bitches in the world are always against me’ – Kyung-chul
Let’s caution you right now: I Saw the Devil is not for the pussies and all ye faint-hearted, lily-livered poltroons.
There’s an orgy of violence in the movie, much of it of the blood-curdling and occasionally sickening variety.
After all, this is a movie about a relentless fight till the end between a cop bent on revenge and a sadistic, psychopathic serial killer who just can’t stop his brutal killing and raping. Continue reading »
Say what you will, but U.S. desis have better taste and, of course, class compared to their compatriots in India when it comes to Bollywood films.
Media reports suggest that Salman Khan’s latest crap-show Ready is going gangbusters in India.
However, Ready has not found the same level of acceptance from U.S. based desis.
In its second weekend (June 10-12, 2011) at the U.S. box office, Ready notched up a total gross of $190,097 (down 58.7%) and an average gross of $1,960.
Ready has done a total gross of $781,855 in the U.S. as of June 12, 2011.
Here’s how Ready fared at the U.S. box office in the second weekend (June 10-12, 2011) compared to a few prominent Bollywood films:
Related Stories:
Ready Review – Pageant of Trash
Ready U.S. Box Office Report – Horrrrrible
In a nation reputed for churning out one crappy movie after another ad infinitum, the mere mention of the late Bengali auteur Satyajit Ray’s name evokes aahs and oohs in India.
No matter that few Indians have watched Ray’s movies and fewer still see them these days.
A couple of years back, we watched one of Ray’s older movies, the black and white Charulata (1964).
We liked Charulata but in the hustle and bustle of everyday events and the clamor from readers for newer films it never made it to SI’s reviews page.
Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977), based on a Munshi Premchand story, too would have met a similar fate but for the persistence of one of our U.S. readers.
Shatranj Ke Khilari is different from Charulata in several ways.
For one, the newer film is in color.
Next, it is in Hindi/Urdu and not in Ray’s native language Bengali.
But Shatranj Ke Khilari has a bigger difference from its precursor – it featured stars, real Bollywood stars. Faces, a lot of Indians would recognize at first glance.
As in the likes of Sanjeev Kumar, Amjad ‘Gabbar Singh’ Khan and Shabana Azmi. Not to forget Amitabh Bachchan as the narrator.
Sanjeev Kumar, Amjad Khan and Amitabh Bachchan were riding high on the wave of Sholay’s stupendous success.
Why Ray felt compelled to hire top stars we’ll never know for sure now given that the man has been dead for nearly two decades now.
Perhaps, Ray wished to paint on a larger canvas. Maybe, he craved, hungered for a bigger audience for his movie than just the Bengali literati who in any case flocked to his films. Or, did he hanker for wider recognition that would come with big stars.
In any case, Ray’s choice of Sanjeev Kumar, Amjad Khan and Shabana Azmi as well as others like Saeed Jaffrey, Richard Attenborough, Victor Banerjee and Farooq Shaikh was by no means an ill-considered move. After all, none of them are to be found wanting in the acting department.
But in our not-so-humble-view, great film-makers do not need the crutch of star-power to woo a fickle public. It is the first step to artistic surrender, maybe?
The final, and most important,difference, is that Shatranj Ke Khilari is merely an above average film while we’d without a second thought place Charulata in the good or even very good category.
Shatranj Ke Khilari is set in 1856 when the British were already well entrenched in the country. The sway of the East India Company extended from the snowy peaks of the Himalayas to the dusty plains of the deep South and from Bombay in the West to Bengal in the East.
But when has the appetite of plunderers been easily sated?
When the weak are prostrate before you, few can resist the the impulse to kick their bowed heads into the dust. Continue reading »
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