Saag Paneer Pizza? Bombay Eats Has Got You Covered
I’ve walked by Bombay Eats, the just out of bounds Indian restaurant on 52nd btw. 8+9th, a million times… but had only noticed this sign for the first time last week. Indian pizza!?! And not some strange Indian creation with some similarities to real pizza. This is real New York City pizza, with Indian toppings. Tandoori chicken, minced lamb, chicken tikka, saag paneer (!?!)
I mean, how could I not right?
Bombay Eats looks like most middle of the road Indian joints in New York City, with one difference. In the middle of the restaurant, at the front of the counter, is a glass case with a couple of pizzas. Pretty standard stuff actually… with cheese, sausage and pepperoni offered by the slice. The guy working the counter told me that they had been selling pizza for years and years, but the sign out front was brand new.
I was pretty disappointed to discover that they don’t serve Indian pizza by the slice- and I didn’t really want to order a whole pie (too expensive and I was by myself.) I asked the guy if he would ever consider selling Indian pizza by the slice. You know… just keep a single pie with tandoori chicken or saag paneer in the front. He told me that there wasn’t enough interest for single slices, so you’d have to order a whole pie if you wanted Indian pizza.
After a bit of hemming and hawing, trying to decide what I should do (I really wanted some Indian pizza), the guy finally offered to serve a slice of cheese pizza, topped with saag from their lunch buffet for $3. Why yes. I think I’d like that very much thank you.
It’s actually not as weird as you would think. You can get pizza topped with spinach at a regular pizza place, why not pizza topped with Indian spiced spinach. And since saag usually comes with paneer (Indian cheese), it worked pretty well with the cheese on the pizza. A tasty treat! I tried convincing the guy to top another slice with some of the other items on the buffet (lamb curry, chicken tikka masala) but he said that you couldn’t do it because the gravy was too wet. Oh well.
I still think he’d make a killing offering Indian pizza by the slice. Maybe if enough people go in and ask him to top their pizza with saag from the buffet, they’ll decide that it would be worth it to at least have one Indian pizza in the window to sell by the slice. You think we could make this happen?!?
Bombay Eats, 314 West 52nd Street (btw. 8+9th), 212-265-7777
Posted by Zach Brooks at 11:45 am, August 24th, 2009 under Bombay Eats, Indian, Pizza.
32 Comments | RSS comments feed for this post
32 Comments
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Chicken Tikka Masala with Saag Paneer pizza might well be the greatest culinary invention ever. Please make this happen.
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Peggy, not really. I was in Korea a few years ago and discovered bulgogi pizza and kimchi pizza.
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That’s f’ing weird looking.
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This headline, “Saag Paneer Pizza?”, hit me harder than any headline I’ve read in recent memory. Two standards in my diet – consumed separately and in vastly distinct moods – wedded together in the face of all the cultural barriers that would seemingly preclude an establishment specializing in one from serving the other. This makes the union of soft-serve ice cream with cookies from the Treats Truck look like a miniscule footnote in the world of combining delicacies.
I couldn’t have conceived of this in my wildest imagination. My mind was bound by cultural expectations and limitations. I can’t wait to endeaver West and expand my reality!
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^ Quite an epic endorsement though.
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Are you kidding me? This is like the 2001: A Space Odyssey moment – humans discovering tools, Kogi combining Korean with Mexican, and now Bombay Eats combining Italian and Indian. Who wants to split a pie with me?
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I’m on 55th & 6th. If anyone ever needs a guinea pig to partner with, just hit me up. Not today though, I just had a chicken sandwich from Carnegie John.
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We’ve had ‘Indian Pizzas’ here for a good few years……..just say no America…next will be Gyro pizza….haggis pizza…black pudding pizza…
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Mmmm… I want me some blood sausage pizza….
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Now all we need is a Singa’s Famous to open in Midtown…
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@ RockCenter — Singas Famous in Midtown would be amazing!!! Maybe they can take one of the empty spaces in Rock Center.
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There is a carnivorous eyeball lurking in the background of that pic. :>
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@Jeff: It looks like Tron Guy.
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I say that we should all go there and demand a slice of saag paneer pizza (or tandoori or whatever). Flavor profiles definitely go together. Maybe that chaat/pizza/deli/latin place on 6th Ave will follow suit. Picadillo pizza, anyone?
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I’ve passed by this restaurant randomly and was thinking of asking you to try it. So wish there were individual slices of tikka pizza! I’ve been afraid to try it at all because it’s usually completely empty every time I pass by.
mkim – I agree: kimchee pizza > tikka pizza.
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@CheeeeEEEEse …and to think Zach is his Master Control Program. Keeping the geekout going, check it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk8_P9nCUT8&feature=player_embedded
All this dorking out is making me hungry. The damn fool should have ordered a full pie and brought us the leftovers
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this is why we love midtownlunch!!!
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saag paneer slice. nice!
and mention of a bulgogi pizza in korea? what’s next? a general tso’s chicken pizza too? they already do buffalo chicken pizza. general tso’s wouldn’t be a stretch. -
This site is REALLY causing me a lot of confusion at home. I always thought that civilized folks (from European extraction) would NEVER eat lamb.
I mean, after all, we Texan’s do not eat that disgusting-tasting meat, although we understand that some people in New Yawk City seem to believe that it is perfectly acceptable. How weird.
Then today, my wife (a genteel Southern woman who is a relative of Sam Houston) admitted to me that she once ate a ‘Gyro’ sandwich which she remembers as being very tasty.
THEN, she noticed that our local GIANT supermarket was featuring ‘Boneless Butterflied Leg of Lamb’ on sale this week for only $4.99 per pound, and requested that I procure a package for her.
I held my nose while making the purchase (although it was packed in Cryovac).
Now I anxiously (or NOT) await the forthcoming experience of a ‘Gyro’ sandwich.
I am pretty certain that I will NEVER be able to stomach lamb, or pizza, or ‘cart food’, or pasta, or matzoh balls, — well, you get the idea.
God I love this site. I will be 500lbs by the end of this year because of it.