Atrip of more than two weeks in India, spent dining mostly on local cuisine, offered an up-close look at the wide variety of authentic culinary options there, and even served to illustrate the fact that Indian restaurants in the United States can often be on target. Yet even as authenticity remains a priority for many operators at home and abroad, both U.S. and Indian restaurants appear to be experimenting with Indian fusion.
The tour of India’s menus revealed numerous discoveries on the vegetarian side of the menu, where such dishes as paneer, a dense fresh cheese, came in an array of sauces, while ground lentils and other beans were formed into patties and fried, and eggplant and okra often were served with excellently spiced stuffings.
Vegetarian menus typically offered four to six potato preparations and several kinds of delectable gnocchi-like dumplings made with chickpea or lentil flour. Some American operations, like Tawa in Stamford, Conn., are doing a good job pushing the envelope with a range of authentic vegetarian dishes, including spinach dumplings in creamy almond sauce, or palak malai kofta, and curried potato and green jack fruit, or aloo kathal curry.
Meats and breads sizzled in tandoors were staples on most nonvegetarian menus and though often delicious, the chicken, lamb and shrimp kebabs were not so different from what I have enjoyed in many Indian operations in New York, such as Tamarind. In fact, the quality of the meats used in India was often not as good.
The fusion phenomenon showed up in such places as the trendy Indigo in Mumbai, which is more Italian than Indian, though the menu includes dishes like tandoor-roasted onion and tuna loin rubbed with cracked mustard seed.
At the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower in Mumbai the chefs are refining Indian food. Dinner will begin with an amuse-bouche, such as a small spoon of spiced potato. Then, dishes like varqui crab layered with delicate phyllo, and dum ki nalli, a braised lamb dish made with tiny bone-in shanks, are not served family-style, which is the usual system in India. Rather they are individually plated, on fine French dinnerware, for each customer.
The Pure restaurant, in another Taj property in Mumbai, the Lands End, has as its consultant Michel Nischan, an owner of the Dressing Room in Westport, Conn. Joshua Kemper, who has been the chef de cuisine since last summer, adds discreet Indian touches to what is essentially a contemporary menu distinguished by its emphasis on organic ingredients, still a rarity in India. There is a black-sesame glaze on quail, potato mustard “spaghetti,” trout from the Himalayas and a saffron-yogurt sauce on steamed sous-vide apples.
That kind of inspiration is increasingly finding acceptance on menus in America. Seared tuna with avocado raita at Tanzore in Beverly Hills, Calif.; crisped calamari with honey chutney at Grayz in New York; and fingerling potato masala at the new Broadway East, also in New York, are a few examples. Metro Kathmandu in San Francisco has a fairly straightforward Indian menu but includes a green salad dressed with curried balsamic vinaigrette. Sen Spice in Sag Harbor, N.Y., applies the tandoor treatment to chicken wings and bakes naan with rosemary and cheese.
Most of the dishes at Elettaria in New York, where the chef and an owner, Akhtar Nawab, is Indian, involve some Indian ingredient, such as skewered lamb sausages with raita and mint. Tabla in New York, one of the first Indian-fusion operations, continues the trend with such dishes as braised duck samosa.
Perhaps the most outstanding dining during the trip was at Indian seafood restaurants. Meaty fish like pomfret and bekti from the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean were cooked in tandoors or sauced with garlic. Stuffed crabs, giant shrimp glazed with spiced tomato and richly seasoned lobster were among the other standouts. Most of these dishes, in restaurants like Oh Calcutta! in New Delhi and Trishna in Mumbai, were more deeply flavored than spicy.
After experiencing that level of quality, perhaps there is a future for Indian seafood restaurants here in the United States.
