Let’s be real: There’s NOTHING like Indian food. And @anantcuisine at Short Pump is doing it masterfully! Let’s dig in to the details…

Appetizer

We started things off with their Lamb Bhuna Bhatura — slow roasted lamb in a masala sauce, served over what was kind of like a fry bread. This was phenomenal! The lamb melted in your mouth, and the bread it was served on made for a perfect pairing. You HAVE to try this.

Drinks

Next up was a round of their new mocktails. One was ginger beer based and had a little kick to it; the other was a super sweet strawberry lychee drink. I can, with confidence, recommend both. Very good and fun for those of you non-drinkers!

Entrees

For our entrees, we had the chicken tikka masala, and the madras pepper chicken.

The creamy tomato-based sauce for the tikka masala was rich and velvety, and the chicken was charred to perfection. We ordered it mild and got their house-made chili sauce on the side so we could control our own heat levels. With a touch of that chili sauce, this was 😘!

Neither of us were a huge fan of the madras pepper chicken. It was good, but didn’t come close (in our opinion) to the tikka masala.

Naan

To go with our entrees, we tried their Peshwari naan (filled with cherries and coconut) and their Bullet naan (covered with chilies and garlic). Both were extremely unique. I’ve always been a sucker for Peshwari naan, and this hit the spot!

Dessert

Finally, some Gulab Jamun for dessert. I don’t really know what this was other than “INCREDIBLE” haha. It was the perfect way to end the night!

Thanks for having us, @anantcuisine. You earned yourself some HIGH scores. Go check them out everyone!

Scores:

• Lamb Bhuna Bhatura: 9.4/10
• Mocktails: 8.1/10
• Chicken Tikka Masala: 9.1/10
• Madras Pepper Chicken: 7.6/10
• Peshwari Naan: 8.5/10
• Bullet Naan: 8.3/10
• Gulab Jamun: 9.2/10