The Regional Flavors Of Gujarat Mingle At Tandoori Taste Of India In Port Chester, New York

Back in the 1970s Asian restaurants—Chinese, Thai and Indian—proliferated into American suburbs, supplanting outdated and often unattractive eateries all serving the same pseudo-ethnic menus. Many of these new places were in strip shopping centers, and by the 1980s nearly every city and town in New York’s Westchester County had its admirable efforts, not least Indian. Air India posters, paisley sheets and tarnished bronze pots were replaced with cleaner, more modern designs, and the owners and chefs began both to refine the old classics like mulligatawny soup and lamb vindaloo while bringing in specialties from their own regions throughout a country with myriad cuisines with hundreds, even thousands of years of tradition.

Bharat Patel and his cousin Kirit, from the western state of Gujarat, were among those pioneers, whose Tandoori Taste of India (TTI) has, after a quarter century in Port Chester, recently moved from East Main Street into bright new quarters on Westchester Avenue. One room has a counter and, when the get their wine and beer license, it should function as a pleasant bar. For the time being you only need cross the street to a grocery owned, as luck would have it, by two Indian fellows (who vouch for the food at TTI).

The other, larger room is spacious, contemporary and the Indian writings on the wall are translated for your edification.

The menu is not revolutionary, though, given its name the tandoori items are requisite, and there is a column of specialties. But, given Patel’s longevity in the field, he has brought all of them to a level of intricacy and distinctiveness—virtues not always found on Indian menus where one sauce carries over into many dishes.

I immediately ordered several Indian breads of a kind I think rank with the best French baguettes, Italian ciabatta, German rye and Greek pita. There is the puffed whole wheat poori that blows up in the oil like a balloon ($5); smoky naans with minced garlic and cilantro ($5); paneer with housemade cheese ($5); and slick onion with minced onion and cilantro ($5).

You’ll find the usual appetizers here, including mulligatawny soup with lentils ($6); crispy samosas stuffed with potatoes, onions, peas, and spices ($5); and the paper-thin stuffed dosa crêpes ($12-$14). But it is the vegetable dishes—for which Gujarat is famous—that TTI really shines. Baingan burhani ($14) is fragrant baked eggplant topped with rich yogurt, mint and a tamarind sauce used judiciously as a sweetening agent. Similar in style but very different in its flavors is the creamed spinach-based saag malai, which can be had solely with vegetables seasoned with fenugreek, fresh garlic and freshly ground Indian spices ($16) or with chicken ($19 ), lamb ($20) or goat ($22). I don’t know if TTI is the only Indian restaurant around serving crispy bhindi chaat ($9) made from matchsticks of okra deep fried and topped with onions and tomatoes, but I found it a terrific addition.

You must have a lentil dish in an Indian restaurant, for the legumes serve as a fairly neutral base for a chef’s inventiveness with spices. Tadka dal ($13) is made with yellow moong lentils tempered with ghee butter, and it’s delicious either as an appetizer of side dish.

The name of the restaurant indicates the kitchen’s predilection for tandoori dishes, and you can get a good representation as an appetizer platter ($14) that contains seekh kabob, chicken tikka, and chicken malai. Otherwise there are thirteen tandoor-fired items on the menu, including succulent lamb chops ($32) with a sprightly lemon and ginger lashing tamed with yogurt; a whole chicken marinated with ginger and garlic ($18); and a whole branzino ($29).

A stand0out specialty is the biryani ($16 to $24), which comes as a hillock of aromatic basmati rice containing your choice of chicken, lamb or goat or shrimp, and enclosing a whole hard0boiled egg, It’s a showpiece and a delight for a table of four or even more.

I adore Indian desserts when they taste freshly made and that is the case at TTI (all $6), where ras malai cakes made with sweet cottage cheese is wonderfully scented, and the gulab jamun spongy balls of lightly fried dough and milk doused with rose water and a honey syrup is unlike anything in western cuisine.

I’ve never left a good Indian restaurant like TTI without taking home the food, and the aromas that fill the car on the way home can make me hungry all over again. Or at least make me want to return soon to TTI and to see what else is new and so different.

TANDOORI TASTE OF INDIA

223 Westchester Avenue

Port Chester, NY

914 937-2727

Tandoori Taste of India is open Tues.-Sun. for lunch and dinner. Sunday brunch.