Naan ‘n Curry on Van Ness

Naan ‘n Curry, that ever-expanding empire of cheap, mediocre curry restaurants in San Francisco and the East Bay, has, in recent months, conquered more territory and set up a new province — this time, at the corner of Turk and Van Ness, in the border region between Civic Center and the Tenderloin.

We’ve been going to Naan ‘n Curry restaurants in both San Francisco and the East Bay for years upon years now; they have such a cult following here, it is essentially impossible to avoid them. Whenever going out with friends for a meal, someone is bound to suggest “Well, what about Naan ‘n Curry?” Then someone else will say: “Yeah, great idea!” By that point, the damage is done, and our attempts at countering this train of thought usually fail, especially since their well-placed restaurants are often frustratingly accessible. Anyway, the end result is many trips to Naan ‘n Curry. In a post from last year, in which we reviewed various locations of Naan ‘n Curry en masse, we essentially put forth the following opinion: sometimes Naan ‘n Curry can produce some decently tasty dishes, and other times they are not at at all tasty or well-prepared. All in all, everything averages out to a mediocre 2-star experience. The fare at Naan ‘n Curry is by no means the “best of the Bay.” The obvious draw here is the cheap price, but it is always worth noting that restaurants like Darbar manage to serve superior fare for perhaps slightly higher (but still entirely comparable) prices.

So, given this opinion, why would Short Exact ever go to a Naan ‘n Curry on our own, voluntarily? Well, the main reason is to respond to readers of this blog — not directly, as no one has ever emailed us to specifically ask for a review of the new Van Ness Naan ‘n Curry. However, we’ve noticed that increasingly, many people doing Google searches end up on this site by typing in strings like “naan n curry van ness”, and the like. Now, we haven’t reviewed this particular branch before now, but we have reviewed Naan ‘n Curry, and one of the neighborhoods listed in the side bar at the right is “Polk Gulch/Van Ness.” The combination of these two text strings has led people to this site, even if this restaurant didn’t specifically appear here. At any rate, we felt bad about all the people who came here looking for a Van Ness review but didn’t find it, so hopefully this post will fill in that gap.

Naan ‘n Curry restaurants are never stylish, but this particular branch has a surprisingly fun, comfortable, well-put-together interior. With the branch on O’Farrell (on the border of Union Square and the Tenderloin), this is probably one of the nicer looking branches. The dining protocol is exactly the same, though: study the menu while standing near the doorway, order your meal at the counter, and then bring your own plates, silverware, and water to the table.

We ordered the chicken biryani:

This dish was acceptably good, and it was of better quality than what we’ve largely come to expect out of Naan ‘n Curry. A recurring problem with Naan ‘n Curry is having to wade through pools of excess oil on the plate, and while this dish was oily, the oil was generally kept in check — although this is at least partly due to the fact that we did not order one of Naan ‘n Curry’s trademark watery curries, opting instead for the biryani, a dish of chicken and rice. The basmati rice added an aromatic touch, and the cumin and cardamom (both should have been more pronounced) managed to permeate through to rather moist, surprisingly tender pieces of chicken, although the dish was a tad oversalted. As the above picture makes clear, the presentation of this dish was not exquisite (with the chicken rather unceremoniously buried beneath the mounds of rice), and this preparation somehow lacked the wonderful characteristic fragrance of an excellent biryani, but overall, this was surprisingly decent. On the grand scale of things, not great, but definitely pretty good for Naan ‘n Curry.

Service seems to be a touch slower than at other branches of Naan ‘n Curry, but we couldn’t say for sure if that’s true in general, since we’ve only made this one visit to the Van Ness branch. At any rate, it’s a little hard what to make of this trip, since it is only one visit. Is this Naan ‘n Curry truly better than the other branches, or did we just happen to stumble upon a decent dish? To be certain, we’d have to go a few more times, but for now, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. This post is not a ringing endorsement, though, so take it with a grain of sea salt.

RATING:

COST:

690 Van Ness Avenue (at Turk St.)
San Francisco, CA 94102
Phone: 415.775.1349
Hours: Mon-Thurs, 11:00 am – 10:00 pm; Fri, 11:00 am – 11:00 pm; Sat, 11:30 am – 11:00 pm; Sun, 11:30 am – 10:00 pm.

Cuisine: Indian/Pakistani
Neighborhood: Polk Gulch/Van Ness

How to get there: Muni lines 5, 31, 38, 47, and 49.