The bhel puri appetizer at Saveur India

We've all been there: You're trying out a new restaurant — an act of willfulness in itself given the human condition tends to seek safety and comfort — and once inside the door, all you want to do is order something familiar. I was so in that mood when I walked into Saveur India in Bethesda.

Feeling blue and faced with a gorgeous Sunday afternoon staring at my computer, I wanted nothing more than a hot serving of butter chicken, the richer the better, with a fragrant round of basmati rice on the side. Some people want chicken soup when they're feeling down. I prefer the spicy unctuousness of butter chicken to satisfy my twin cravings for comforting fat and stimulating heat.

But once I spotted chef-owner Anil Kumar's house specialty, a chicken dish smothered in an almond and cashew-heavy curry, I was suddenly faced with the Critic's Dilemma: Do I cater to my own self-centered needs or do I suck it up and try something new for the sake of the job? I cursed my fate and opted for the latter.

The house specialty is also known as dum ka murgh, and when it arrived at the table in a wide-mouthed copper pot, it pretty much looked like diner-quality smothered chicken, as brown and exotic as...well, diner-quality smothered chicken. My first bite of the dum ka revealed something else altogether: Despite its lackluster appearance, Kumar's gravy moved across my tongue in lolling midnight waves, leaving behind one flavor after another as the curry receded. I tasted creaminess, then nuttiness, then mint, and then finally this pinch of pepper heat. I was slapped awake by the complexity of this seemingly mild sauce.

Everything else at our table paled by comparison to the dum ka murgh, even my dining companion's butter chicken (hey, you didn't take me for a complete fool, did you?), which was appropriately rich but short on spice and depth. The crunchy bhel puri appetizer (pictured above) would have benefited from a meaner, spicier tamarind chutney to balance out its sweet and tangy flavors, while the crispy calamari pakora was as limp as day-old french fries but still surprisingly flavorful.

After sampling all the dishes around our table, I happily raced back to my dum ka murgh. I was reminded, once again, that the thrill of discovery can be far more invigorating than the comfort of the familiar.

Saveur India, 6831 Wisconsin Ave. NW, (301) 951-0062

My new best friend: the dum ka murgh at Saveur India

The soggy crispy calamari pakora

Would somebody please give Vikram Sunderam a James Beard Award already? The Rasika chef has figured out a way to weave street food into an upscale Indian menu, introduced Subcontinental tasting menus with wine pairings, and generally created a whole culture around the once humble home cooking of India. How much more does the guy need to do?

633 D St. NW (202) 637-1222

Photo by methTICALman via Flickr Creative Commons, Attribution License

Atul Bhola of Masala Art

It happens to rock bands all the time: They start rolling in dough and having to push through a barricade of groupies on the way from the green room, and suddenly their music turns to crap. It can happen to restaurants, too. But while there are signs that Masala Art, the breakout star of Tenleytown, is suffering under the weight of the acclaim heaped on it since it opened last year—the crowds can sometimes be more than the servers and kitchen can handle—the restaurant remains a destination for those in search of sophisticated Indian cooking. Owner Atul Bhola researched hundreds of dishes and narrowed the field to the 60 or so on Masala’s menu, most of them from the cuisines of Northern India but with occasional forays into the South, such as the fried and fiery Chicken 65 appetizer. The lamb vindaloo brings the heat like Stephen Strasburg, and the butter chicken rolls over the tongue creamy, sweet, tart, and spicy. Go during a less-crowded time and you’ll taste for yourself that chef Surinder Kumar hasn’t let success go to his head.

4441 Wisconsin Ave. NW (202) 362-4441

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Perhaps that's an exaggeration, but it's one born from childhood memories, which are prone to romantic visions of the past, particularly with memories tied to formative eating experiences. Writer and cookbook author Monica Bhide takes over the Young & Hungry column this week with a story about the butter chicken her father used to make.

The way Bhide describes the process (complete with a recipe for you to recreate at home), it sounds like the best butter chicken in the world. I think at one point, I drooled on my computer keypad. Read the story for yourself and see if you don't, too.

Or better yet, try the recipe at home and see if Bhide's a hopeless romantic or merely a culinary historian, meticulously handing down family traditions.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

It seemed a hope beyond comprehension for D.C. to spawn two quality Indian outlets on the same street within a matter of months. I mean, we already had the instant-hit Masala Art in Tenleytown. Could Washingtonians find another one just a few blocks north on Wisconsin at Cafe of India?

Alas, Cafe of India, despite its elegant tan dining room with tables set with matching cloths (and paper placemats!),  is not yet ready to enter the rarefied realm of Masala Art, although it does apparently want to compete with the town's best curry makers. Case in point: Cafe of India offers a "crackling spinach" appetizer with fried leaves, slices of avocado, and date chutney. It's obviously a take on Rasika's now iconic palak chaat.

The new dish does dwarf Rasika's starter in one aspect: It's a far larger serving than chef Vikram Sunderam's polite bowl of crispy spinach, which always vanishes before your appetite for it does. But the version at Cafe of India suffers from an overly sweet date chutney, which is applied so thickly that it moves the appetizer advertised as "crackling" far closer to the mushy category.

The fatty avocado keeps the starter grounded, but the dish could benefit from more sour and spice flavors to help provide balance and prevent the appetizer from floating away on a cloud of sweetness.

The kitchen shows promise in other areas of the menu, particularly its take on saag paneer, which is rich and aromatic and features a wonderfully firm cheese. Cafe of India also turns out a respectably fiery chicken makhani(though a little oily) and a lamb curry (whose heat is expertly undercut with the slightest hint of sweet spice). One weak spot, at present, is the operation's garlic naan, which arrives with virtually raw minced garlic, making for a pungent (and slightly astringent) bite. Take a look for yourself:

A certain "glossy local magazine" isn't the only publication/Web site that has praised Bombay Indian Restaurant in Silver Spring. Y&H has had many nice things to say about the strip-mall restaurant; so has Tyler Cowen (aka Mr. Ethnic Dining Guide) and even WaPo's Eve Zibart (a personal fave to read, though now sadly retired from the reviewing scene).

Restaurant Rater Gerholdt proudly refutes the professional palates with this concise and informative review. I can confirm that the Bombay buffet is history, too. The last time I dined there, the waiter said it was a victim of these recessionary times. Apparently there's too much waste on buffets.

Anyway, back to Gerholdt. Take a look at this take-down:

I dropped in for lunch based on the glowing reviews from a certain glossy local magazine that filled the entire front window. First observation: the buffet mentioned in the reviews is a thing of the past. Second: yellowish color is OK in a tikka masala but just overwhelming on all the walls. So I order the lamb curry from the lunch "special" menu. Service is glacial despite the fact that there are only two other tables occupied and they have both been served already. The rice tastes like supermarket rather than basmati, the sauce is insipid with a faint undertone of heat, and there are four bite-sized pieces of lamb, which at least are tender. The lassi is thick but has little flavor beyond the yogurt base.

The food might barely rate 3 sporks but given the atmosphere, service, and value I gotta say two. We only get to eat three times a day – this one was a waste of perfectly good stomach space.

Do you disagree with Gerholdt? Then fire up your own review here.

Atul Bhola spent the past 10 years as a manager at Heritage India, dutifully fulfilling his front-of-the-house duties while others, notably head chef Surinder Kumar, produced the curries that earned this small, two-restaurant chain all the praise.

Bhola still walks the floor at his new restaurant, Masala Art in Tenleytown, but the man formally trained in hotel management back in his native India has allowed his other personality to step forward: his would-be chef. Bhola created Masala's menu himself, then lured his friend, Kumar, away from Heritage to execute it and fine-tune it.

Together, these two men have instantly created one of the top Indian restaurants in the area. You can read all about it in this week's Young & Hungry column.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Chef Sanjay Thumma is delightfully unself-conscious. His shtick is equal parts hucksterism, infomercial (late-night cable variety), and home cooking show, the sloppy mise en place notwithstanding. (Seriously, chef, you need to measure out those half-teaspoons a little more carefully.)

Still, despite Thumma's used-car salesman persona, he seems to be on the mark about the origins of Chicken 65. Atul Bhola, owner of Masala Art in Tenleytown, where you can order the dish, told me the name comes from a restaurant in southern India where Chicken 65 was merely the (you guessed it) 65th item on a long list of chalkboard dishes.

The spicy fried chicken went viral in India, if you'll excuse the phrase, and its appearance on other menus under the name Chicken 65 is sort of an homage to the restaurant of origin. At least that's Bhola's take.

Thumma has a slightly different story. The manic chef says the dish came from a "military cantina" where it was listed as the 65th item on the menu. "That is all," Thumma says, as if we all had desperately clung to the many mythologies surrounding Chicken 65.

Whatever its origin, you should definitely check out the version at Masala Art, which I review this week in the Young & Hungry column. See a picture of Masala's Chicken 65 after the jump.

It'd be perfectly reasonable to assume that the preponderance of lamb has to do with the cow's sacred place among Hindus in India, an argument that stands up until you realize that most of the lamb production occurs in other countries.

Check out this quote from an FAO report about livestock production in Asia:

Mutton and lamb production failed to expand in most countries in the Asia-Pacific region. China had the highest average growth. Production in Australia and New Zealand, both significant suppliers of sheep meat to world markets, remained stable.

So how has a (mostly) imported meat become such a standard among Indians? In short: It hasn't. Lamb is an American substitute for the meat most often consumed by Indians back home: goat.

In her classic cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking (originally published in 1973), Madhur Jaffrey delves into Indians' love for goat and the switch to lamb on American soil:

When an Indian sits down to eat meat, it is nearly always goat meat. The English have translated the meat as mutton, but it is not to be confused with the aged sheep meat available in England, Australia, and New Zealand. Perhaps the English in India didn't know what else to call it — or perhaps they found a dish called "mutton chops" more palatable than if it was called plain old "goat chops." Who knows!

At any rate, "mutton" in India is not old sheep meat — far from it. It is usually very fresh goat meat and therefore not always very tender. Because of the lack of proper refrigeration facilities in India (most butchers cannot afford any) the animals are slaughtered daily and the meat is sold within 24 hours. In the richer homes it is then washed and refrigerated or frozen. But in the poorer homes it is cooked immediately. Since the meat is fairly tough, it is cooked slowly, over a longish period of time. For quicker fried and grilled dishes, the meat has to be tenderized first. The cheapest and most common tenderizer is crushed green papaya, but marinades of vinegar and yogurt are also used.

Not only is Indian goat meat a little on the tough side; it is also very lean. The result is that we use a great deal of cooking fat to brown our meats. We tend to like this "browned" look. When I buy lamb here in America (lamb is the best substitute for the Indian "mutton"), I first trim away all signs of fat. Then, to make it taste like the food I have in India, I cook it in lots of oil. This cooking fat can, of course, be removed later, once the dish is completely cooked, by spooning it off the top just before serving.

What's unspoken here, I think, is Americans' general distaste for chewy meats (very general given the difficulty of quantifying anything that this wacky country does). This distaste, more than anything, likely explains why goat has never become a staple on Indian menus in the United States. Back in India, it's another story.

Atul Bhola, owner of Masala Art (the subject of next week's Young & Hungry), agrees that goat is more common in his native India, but he adds one interesting note: Indians who have immigrated to the states don't tend to eat domestic lamb. It doesn't taste right to many of them, Bhola says.

If stateside Indians are going to eat lamb, he adds, they will stick with the New Zealand product, which doesn't have the off-putting flavors and smells of the domestic stuff. I ask Bhola if he ever served goat to his Indian guests, and he said no. He doesn't have a separate menu for Indians.

But he did say that Passage to India, Sudhir Seth's jewel of a place in Bethesda, serves a goat curry. Check it out, if you'd really like to eat like an Indian.

Photo by adactio via Flickr Creative Commons, Attribution License