This is another awesome Tasting Collective dining club event we attended in June 2023. (You can read about the previous posts about Tasting Collective events here: Fish Cheeks, Win Son, FOB, Xixa, Huertas, Bessou, Maharlika, Traif, Lalito, Noreetuh, Traif #2, Txikito, Oka, Xixa2, TabeTomo, Houseman, Nowon, GAUDIr, and Contento). Tasting Collective is a dining club for food lovers, and they offer brunch and dinner at great NYC restaurants. They close off the restaurants for the club, so we get to have the entire restaurant and Chef(s) all to ourselves. So, this is more than just eating food at a restaurant, but you get to have the background story and its passion from the Chef(s), eating 5- to 12- or more course brunch/dinner created specifically for Tasting Collectives. There is a discount code at the end of this blog for those of you who are interested in joining.
This event was held at Jaz Indian Cuisine, 5-course Tribute to Northern Indian Tasting Event. We haven’t attended much of any Tasting Collective events for a while, so we were excited to return to this dinner event! Jaz Indian Cuisine just opened in February 2022, and they have been featured as “Best Indian Restaurants in NYC” on Eater’s and Tasting Table’s 2022 Lists.
The owner, Jaz Rupall and the head Chef, Kul Bahadur Dangi came out to greet us all, which is always the highlight of the Tasting Collective events. Love hearing about the background and history of the restaurant and their food creation. The name of this restaurant, Jaz Indian Cuisine, came from the name of the owner, who is from the UK. It was interesting to hear that she started to host dinner parties after moving to NYC, and her dishes were so popular, everyone wanted her recipe! And together with Chef Dangi, a native of Nepal, she is now a proud owner of Jaz Indian Cuisine!
My husband couldn’t resist an Indian beer (no surprise there LOL), so he ordered Kingfisher Beer ($8). It was light and crisp, tasty lager.
Then our First course arrived. It was Tandoori & Vegetable Platter, with pakora, onion fritters, and crispy cauliflower. I feel like the platter actually had more than described, which was perfectly fine with us. They cook the chicken in their tandoori clay oven, which is awesome!
The fried vegetable were very nice, lightly fried, not greasy, and with the condiments, it added extra flavor to them. I was expecting some heat from the green sauce, but it was very mild. The red sauce tasted a bit like apricot. The two kinds of chicken pieces, Chicken Tikka and Ginger Chicken, were quite tough and a bit dry. The fire-red lamb Seekh Kebab was spicy, had a really good kick to it. Then there were the ones that looked like Buffalo Cauliflower, Lasuni Gobi, cauliflower florets lightly batter-fried garlic sauce. It was sweet and tangy, I kind of like that. I would say, the one with most flavor and the most memorable of all was the Seekh Kebab.
Second Course was Chicken Tikka Masala, with tandoori chicken, tomato sauce, and naan. Basmati Rice accompanied the Tikka Masala. The aroma of the Tikka Masala was so amazing, I could not wait to dig in!
The Chicken Tikka Malasa was sweet and buttery, very coconut-y. I was expecting a little heat, but it was very mild, not spicy at all. It had a nice depth to the flavor, you can taste the natural sweetness of the tomato, but I would’ve liked more spices. The chicken in here were much better than the appetizer pieces, more tender. It went great with the fluffy rice.
While we were enjoying the Chicken Tikka Masala, the Third and Fourth courses were brought to the table. They were Lamb Rogan Josh with lemon & pea rice, deseeded dried chili, mixed spices, and then Palak Paneer with cottage cheese, puréed spinach, ginger, garlic. My husband who loves spinach dishes got too ecstatic when he saw the Palak Paneer, and he went in before I could take a picture. Another Tasting Collective member sitting next to me quickly came to my rescue and told me I can take pictures of his beautiful, untouched Palak Paneer. How kind and considerate! Love meeting other food lovers at these events, who are just super amazing and fun to talk to. We were lucky to have really nice people at our table, making the food taste even better with fun company.
Then the basket full of fluffy Naans arrived for the table! They were classic Naan and Garlic Naan. Now, I was really ready to dig in! The lamb was so incredibly tender, they just melt in your mouth! Again, it was not spicy at all, but had the rich lamb stew type flavor. Palak Panner was smooth and creamy, with homemade cottage cheese pieces that were firm yet fluffy, almost like dried tofu pieces. Had subtle kick from the ginger, which was nice.
The Fifth and the last course was the dessert. It was Gulab Jamun with milk solid, semolina, green cardamom, rose water, saffron. I had Gulab Jamun from Aangan and Chola, so I knew it was going to be very sweet. Well, it was sweet but not overly sweet, and the texture was bouncy and fluffy. Maybe because I was expecting super sweet flavor, it made it better, or maybe I just like their Gulab Jamun better.
They have one gender neutral bathroom in the back to the left. The bathroom was big, enough for two or three NY-sized bathrooms. It had a regular toilet and a urinal which was very interesting… It was clean and well-lit.
Most of the ingredients used here are made on the premises, and with organic spices. Souds great to me. Jaz explained that the dishes were created with the mild spice level for the “average pallet” for the event, but they can be changed on the level of spicy-ness, which is good to know. The service felt a bit cold, but they were very efficient. We had a nice Tasting Collective event here, we would like to go back for more Indian dishes with some spicy heat added the next time!
For those of you who are interested in joining this great dining club, Tasting Collective, you can use this link to get a discounted annual rate of $125 (over 25% off the normal $165/year) for the first year: https://tastingcollective.com/?invite_code=JUN4346
Jaz Indian Cuisine – 813 9th Ave, New York, NY 10019