The Indian Kitchen, West End

The entire week leading up to the Friday before last I was craving a chicken vindaloo.  I located a menu from the Indian Kitchen and was surprised to discover that it indicated that they offered chicken vindaloo (they never have in the past, in my experience).  First, a couple of words on the Indian Kitchen before I describe my dining experience.  The Indian Kitchen is the oldest extant casual dining Indian restaurant in West End and is one of the cheapest places you can get a meal in the suburb.  I remember when it first opened I was very impressed with the place and ate there often.  However, over time things changed and I started to find their food bland, at least by Indian standards, and in recent times I have only gone there if I want something quick and easy.  The food is by no means bad, but you can get better Indian food elsewhere.  Anyway, the allure of a chicken vindaloo found me there two Fridays ago.  When I got there however, there was no such chicken vindaloo on offer.  This angered me a little.  If you go to the effort of printing a menu for your restaurant, said menu should accurately reflect the meals you provide.  Disheartened as I was, I decided to order something else.  I was tossing up between the lamb vindaloo (a hot curry) and the lamb madras (a medium curry).  In the end the vindaloo won out, but in retrospect I should have gone with the madras.  To accompany my curry I ordered a chicken tikka naan.  Chicken tikka naan as the name suggests is a naan bread with pieces of chicken throughout.  It's a great take on naan and it's a shame that you can't get it at more Indian restaurants.  When I got home, I started on my meal as I usually do with Indian food, by dipping the bread in the sauce.  The bread was great as I expected.  The sauce actually exceeded my expectations, but then again I didn't have particularly high hopes as the last time I tried the Indian Kitchen's lamb vindaloo, I found it watery and with little flavour other than extreme spiciness.  On this occasion, the sauce was less than excellent:  you can certainly get better vindaloo sauce elsewhere, but at least it was decent.  The main problem lied in the fact that it was really spicy.  Traditionally, I can handle spiciness.  I often ordered hot curries all the time.  However, in recent years, I guess my palate and physiology have changed, and I usually stick to relatively milder curries.  So, while it was spicier than I would I have liked, it was nothing my palate couldn't handle.  My stomach on the other hand was a different matter.  I finished off the bread, which was on the large side, but I couldn't eat any more because my stomach would not allow it.  The spice was really wreaking havoc.  It didn't make my physically sick or anything, but my stomach was sending signals to the rest of my body that I shouldn't have eaten something so spicy.  So I spent a couple of hours doing something else until my stomach felt better.  When it did, I decided to tackle the curry once more.  By this stage I was just down to the meat and rice.  The lamb was not cooked to perfection, but it was reasonable, and on the plus side, not stringy like lamb can sometimes be.  I was happy to discover that the level of spice had seemed to dissipate somewhat, and was a little more palatable.  Once again, though my stomach revolted and I just could not finish the meal and it sat in the fridge until it was thrown out days later.  So while this was an adequate vindaloo, it was not worth the strain it put on my stomach.  Lesson learned:  avoid hot curries from now on.