By Gene Gonzalez Having been what you may call a retired Boracay habitué for several years, my bi-annual visits seem to make me more impressed with the restaurant scene as more and more themed places seem to pop up to cater to the ever widening market of visitors. One such place my son, Chef Gino, has been telling me about is Masala Moe’s, a restaurant that presents an Indian family’s legacy of good eating. I did get to meet Moe who owns the place on the very day I arrived in the island and shared some drinks at Epic with our Masflex partner, Haresh Mirchandani. This reinforced my resolve to visit his place with Gino and the hungry chefs. We took a short tricycle ride to City Mall and got to this tidy and quaint restaurant that seemed to be very busy with packing and deploying take-out orders. Dinner started with hummus and baba ghanouj with naan.  The chickpea puree or hummus was wonderfully smooth as with the roasted eggplant puree or baba ghanouj that we picked with our freshly cooked bread or naan. Next, a shrimp biryani that had subtle seasoning from sweet wood spices that would build up in flavor as we took spoonfuls of this dish made with the extra long and slim grains of genuine basmati rice. We also had the tandoori chicken, which had a correct masala marinade, though I of course did not have the high expectations of it being roasted in a tandoori. Nevertheless it was quite tasty and had a dose of warmth from the spices and was rounded off with a creamy garlic sauce. Our other meat course was a lamb dish where we opted for a darker deeper tasting and more pronounced masala sauce. Our kebabs arrived grilled in little sausage forms which was more like koftas but were bursting with meat juices as you slice them. For our dessert we tried out the gulab jamun with ice cream. Personally, I am not too fond of Indian desserts that are infused with syrup. I guess super sweet desserts do go as a finale for the combinations of spices or masalas in an Indian repast I did come back alone a couple of days after, this time sampling the keema or spiced ground beef that went well with flat bread or naan. I tried their milder stew or chicken curry instead of the masala sauce previously and the light sweet spices with a little earthiness from the turmeric was great both with a vegetable biryani or sopping up the sauce with torn pieces of bread. Though I had my mind set on some halo halo across the street. There wasn’t really much room left and I ended up hiking to Hennan Prime for a couple of  decent espressos and a great view of strings and the beach.   You can email me at [email protected] or pm me on my Instagram