Calling All Portland Area Indians (Dot, not Feather)

Is that considered offensive? Well, it gets worse: I'll settle for any person (or small family) of South Asian descent - or anybody at all who has ever spent considerable time in South Asia - who can cook anything that we can laughably call Indian food.

For the love of Krishna and all that is good, please oh please open a hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant on NE Alberta Street anywhere between 15th and 33rd avenues. There is a giant culinary sucking sound on Alberta Street and it's called casual Indian food.

Do you know what Alberta Street does not need? Not even the tiniest bit? More Thai food. Stop it with the Thai food. We don't need more "traditional Thai cuisine," we don't need more "nouvelle Thai cuisine," we don't need more "Thai-Inspired tapas" and we don't even need a Thai food cart. What we need is basic Indian food. Good old stick-to-your-second-chakra curries, vegetables, rice, garlic naan, etc.

I swear on a stack of Upanishads that if you open a simple, unpretentious, reasonably-priced Indian restaurant on Alberta Street, all my friends and I will be there every night ordering bengan bartha, mango chutney and Kingfisher beers until the sacred cows come home.

-Anonymous (sort-of)