Curry favor

When you think of Indian food, it’s curry. But believe me when I tell you, it’s a whole lot more than curry. It’s an extraordinary rollercoaster ride of seductive flavors and textures. From the first millennium, aromatic pepper, cloves, cardamom and cinnamon were carried around the world from the subcontinent.

F.S. Zubar opened Taste of India in 2003. The modest room will seat about 40, and the décor is a bit eclectic with the walls of salmon and turquoise. Comfortable tables and booths with the proper touch of linen napkins for dinner complement the experience, and the staff is efficient. The menu has traditional names with English translations, but the hurry-up mentality Americans have about eating makes it more challenging to order if you have to study the menu rather than just say “medium rare or over easy.”

I decided to stick with foods that had a myriad of flavors and played a little more to the American palate. However, this menu is a treasure trove of remarkable foods with flavors to challenge and educate the senses and delight and satisfy. From the vegan to the meat eater, there is something for everyone, and everything is made in-house.

Papdam ($2.95) was served with a sweet savory sauce. These are paper thin lentil crackers with black pepper. The sauce compounds the flavors of salt, sweet and savory. Simple, but it got those taste buds going. A vegetable pakora ($2.95) is a thinly sliced eggplant deep fried with a seasoned, light batter cooked in vegetable oil. Again, a small portion with a savory flavor, both very tasty and nice appetizers.

Tandoori is the most popular Indian food among Americans. A tandoor is a cylindrical clay oven used in cooking and baking. The heat for a tandoor was traditionally generated by a charcoal or wood fire, burning within the tandoor itself, thus exposing the food to live-fire, radiant heat cooking, and hot-air, convection cooking, and smoking by the fat and food juices that drip on to the charcoal.

I went with the chicken tandoori ($8.95), marinated in a flavorful mild sauce with freshly ground piquant spices, then roasted in the Tandoor served with sliced onion and lemon. The crimson color of the meat accented with light, charcoal hue, was succulent with a pleasant spicy taste, not overwhelming but flavorful and distinctive.

Curry is a must. Chicken vindaloo ($9.95) is chunks of chicken cooked in a specially hot and spicy sauce. This is a rush for the taste buds. Garlic, onions, ginger, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, heat—your mouth explodes with flavors, not to mention the uncontrolled blush in your face from the spice-o-rama heater. They make all curry dishes to your taste, mild to hot. I had some garlic naan bread ($2.50) to help curb the heat, cooked in the tandoor, light, leavened bread stuffed with some onion—great complement to all the food.

Modest cocktails are offered, some wine and beers including Kingfisher from India—not a bad lager—and a few domestic beers. A lassi is a traditional drink, and I chose a sweet lassi ($2.50), a popular yogurt-based drink, to cool my mouth. It’s slightly sweet and creamy and has that yogurt finish, a little tart. Dessert was kulfi ($2.25). Kulfi has similarities to ice cream in appearance and taste, but unlike Western ice creams, kulfi is not whipped, resulting in a solid, dense frozen dessert. It was refreshing with some texture and a nice vanilla flavor.

Intricate, fascinating, different, delicious and unpretentious—if you’re a foodie, then you need a taste of India.