Delicious

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Update:  11/2/2017
Delicious has moved to the former location of Nishan.
I ate there today with a friend and my impression remains basically the same.

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Rating: OK
Meal:  Take Out Dinner for 2
Price:  2700 yen
Payment:  Credit Cards accepted
Dishes:  Butter Chicken Kid's set, Vegetable Biryani, Spicy Boneless Chicken
English Menu: Yes

Smoking:  No

Indian food in Yokosuka, nay, in Japan, is similar to Thai and Chinese in that it has been adapted to Japanese tastes, and is therefore, not very good.  There has been one Indian restaurant that I would rate excellent, and a couple that I might rate very good.  The rest are pretty much just an OK.

On Thursdays, my son and I usually have the evening together, and we typically eat dinner out at a place he is guaranteed to like.  This means alternating between Chinese (fried rice) and Indian (curry plus naan).  Tonight was time for Indian, and we decided to do take out so we could have more time for other things at home.  There are what seems like around 10 Indian restaurants in the main Yokosuka area, but all of them are pretty much on the same ground when it comes to flavor.  It seems that at some point several Nepalese immigrants opened Indian restaurants and tailored the flavors to Japanese tastes.  As a result, we have a pretty uniform blandness that all of the restaurants embody.  The naan (the only bread option, no chapati or roti) is slightly sweet.  I've stopped eating it completely.  The curries are very single noted, without the real complexity of Indian curries.  The roasted meat is ok for what it is, not spectacular.  So it really doesn't matter where we end up going.  I happened to have a menu on the fridge for Delicious, which is also the closest restaurant to us, so I went ahead and ordered our meal over the phone and 15 minutes later went downstairs to pick it up.


I have no complaints about the service at any of the Indian restaurants.  They are always polite and quick.  Delicious does stand out by taking credit cards.  It's also a little more expensive, and happens to be the one most people I know consider the best Indian in town.  The main thing I like there is their Spicy Boneless Chicken, but I like some rice with flavor to put it on, so I got the Vegetable Biryani.  This is a lot for one person to eat, so now I have leftovers for breakfast, yay!  My son got the Kids set which is a small butter chicken curry (or regular chicken curry...and the difference is?  I can't tell...) with a piece of naan.  We found out you can't get the drinks to go, but usually the sets come with a drink which my son prefers to be lassi.  Lassi is another sticking point for me.  I love salty lassis that I could get at any Indian restaurant in Kuwait, and in most good Indian restaurants they will make one for me even if its not on the menu.  This is now one of my tests to see if the restaurant has potential...if they'll easily make me a salty lassi (or even know what I was talking about), then there is potential their food will taste good.  Another key is bread...if there are more than one or two bread types on the menu (not just naan repackaged into various stuffed varieties), then maybe their spices are symphonic.

Anyway, we continue to eat the mediocre Indian food around here because we can't get anything better.  Maybe someday we'll get to eat at the excellent place we found near Yokota Air Base, and if so I'll review it here.