Pages

Monday, September 26, 2011

Ajuba Indian Restaurant in Ashland, VA

Ashland now has an Indian restaurant!  It is called Ajuba Indian Cuisine, 141 Junction Drive, Ashland, VA, 23005, 804-752-7552, near the Food Lion.  We've eaten there three or four times and recently had our best meal yet.  I got the Dal Maharani (black lentils with red kidney beans in a rich creamy sauce) while Laura got the Badami Chicken (boneless chicken cooked with onion gravy and almond paste).  With a side of Aloo Parantha (whole wheat flour naan bread stuffed with spicy potatoes). We shared.  It was awesome.

Spiciness doesn't have to mean "spicy hot" in Indian food - it can just mean flavorful.  Although when you order off the menu at Ajuba they allow you to select the spiciness of your meal on a scale of one to ten.  I chose a six for my dish (I used to go even spicier but I'm scaling back) and Laura chose a four.  I did level seven here once before and that was a little too hot for my taste.  Five is probably a good number if you're OK with some spiciness but don't want to be overwhelmed.

Ajuba is open seven days a week. There's a lunch buffet every day from 11:30am to 2:30pm and dinner is served from 5 to 9pm.  Effective October 5th they will also be doing a dinner buffet on Wednesday nights.  Buffet style is a great introduction and way to sample Indian food due to the variety of things you get to try for a set price.  When doing the buffet I try and make mental notes of things I enjoyed (one of my favorites is Chana Masala) to help me decide when I have to order off the menu.

One of the reasons I love going to Indian restaurants is because besides maybe a table or two of actual Indian people there's hardly ever anyone else there.  ("stuff white people like").  That's actually a shame because Indian food is soooooo good!  It's also a Catch-22.  I want Ajuba to succeed and stay in business so I hope more folks will check it out. It's definitely one of the top dining options we have in Ashland.  Much, much better than the chain restaurants right off the I-95 exit.  Oh yeah....they also have beer!  Domestic bottles for the non-adventurous plus some tasty Indian varieties like Kingfisher and Taj Mahal that pair well with the food.

Besides Ajuba, the nearest Southern Asian cuisine to Ashland is several miles away in either downtown Richmond or the West End (unless you count Thai Gourmet near King's Charter), so Ajuba is a welcome addition.  If you love this type of food then it's also another reason to make the trek to our cool little town in the Center of the Universe.

See below for the Ajuba menu.

 
















Branch out!

1 comment:

  1. Ashland now has an Indian restaurant! It is called Ajuba Indian Cuisine,the indian resturent is food very testy and healthy.

    ReplyDelete