Namaste

 Last night 4 of us ate at Namaste, which features south and north
 Indian cuisine. We ordered only vegetarian dishes and had a superb
 meal.

 We ordered a vegie platter as an appetizer. It had a pleasant
 assortment of appetizers. There was not really enough for four, but
 that was OK since we had plenty more food.

 Then we had baingain bharta, a vegie curry, south Indian thali
 (which is a little bit of a whole bunch of different foods), and
 vegie biryani, plus an assortment of breads.

 We ate, and ate, and ate. And, although doing so is against our
 principles, left some food.

 Everything was excellent! Of course each of us liked some dishes
 more than others, but I think everyone ate some of everything.

 The total cost of this feast was only $60 (before tip) for four. We
 had no alcohol.

 Namaste is at 3101 Banksville Road, in Banksville Plaza. Coming
 from the Fort Pitt tunnel, it's on the left side, maybe a mile or
 so past the tunnel. Facing the Plaza from the road, it's at the
 left end of the Plaza. When we were there the sign was missing
 because of some construction thing. The phone number is
 412-563-1901.

 Enjoy!

 Art Evans

 A friend and I went to Namaste last Friday.
 I'd been dying to try it after all the raves
 on pgh.food.  We shared an order of samosas.
 They were mediocre.  We also shared a masala
 dosa.  It was cold and over done (dark brown).
 The masala was okay but not great.  This thing
 was a far cry from Sri's and even Udipi's (as
 close second to Sri's) dosas.  For the main
 course I ordered the lamb rogan josh which was
 good but not great.  Jackie ordered the aloo
 gobi and she said it was okay but didn't think
 it was "saucy" enough - too dry.  We both agreed
 that we probably won't go back.  Also, the prices
 were a tad high, I thought.  (Didn't someone on
 here say they thought it was inexpensive?)  I'm
 used to paying just under $2 for a glass of lassi
 and theirs was $2.75 so I didn't order any.  The
 price of the samosas wasn't too out of line but
 I thought that a lot of the prices were higher than
 average.

 I'll stick with Taste of India and India Garden
 and even Taj Mahal in N. Hills.  I hope to try
 Maharajah soon and hope it lives up to the things
 I've heard about it (the good ones, not the bad
 ones ;-)).
 Kate

 User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.2 (PPC Mac OS X)
 Lines: 9
 Message-ID:
 NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.226.234.175
 X-Complaints-To: [email removed]
 X-Trace: rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net 1038852592 12.226.234.175 (Mon, 02 Dec 2002 18:09:52 GMT)
 NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 18:09:52 GMT
 Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 18:09:53 GMT
 Xref: usenet.INS.cwru.edu pgh.food:15187

  JohnV wrote:

 > I've eaten a lot of Indian food from all over the US and Europe and
 > since moving here I am impressed with some of the restaurants,
 > particularly Namaste and Taj Mahal on McNitemare Road.

 speaking of which, I just had dinner again at Udipi Cafe on Old William
 Penn Highway. Awesome and inexpensive, as the regulars know.