Tuesday: More Curry Hill, and Amazing Jazz

Tuesday I grabbed a decent sandwich for lunch. But dinner was the interesting meal. I was in the mood for Indian, so back to Curry Hill I went, this time to a place called Banjara. (Sorry for a poor quality photo. I really wanted to take the photo from a particular place, but that place was the middle of the street...) It was a pretty nice restaurant, quite crowded: definitely not one of those desperate curry hill restaurants. I had a marinated lamb dish that was quite tasty. (It really didn't have a typical indian food type taste but actually reminded me of my mom's marinated lamb, which I really like.) Some good piping hot (pea) samosas too.

I still wanted to go something after dinner. So I checked my list of jazz clubs I wanted to visit and found one with a set that started late. I ended up at the Zinc Bar for the 11pm set. It was small and cozy, candles and brick walls. Although packed, I got lucky and found a seat at the bar. The band was the Alex Blake quartet. One normally doesn't find a band named after the bassist but this time the naming was appropriate. He was freaken` amazing; the bass just wailed. He played it as fast and energetic and expressive as many play electric (bass) guitars. And he added some beating on the side of the bass and some occasional scat vocals. During an intermission he actually played an electric bass guitar and one could see the similarity. But it was amazing! I've never seen a bass played like that... (And the rest of the musicians were really good too. :) Here's a review of them.)

The day was definitely a good use of my subway card: to google, google to curry hill, curry hill to home, home to soho, soho to home.