Bennett: Wok N Tandoor to the rescue in O.C.
Indian food has always worn many faces in Orange County, from formal to fast casual to fusion.
Maybe it’s because we’re just a few miles on the wrong side of the county line to lay claim to L.A.’s famous Little India — the ample crowding of traditional restaurants and glimmering sari stores that line Artesia’s Pioneer Boulevard — but O.C. has forged its own South Asian food culture that stretches from Laguna Beach to Anaheim to the epicenter of Indian lunch buffets that is Tustin.
The most nationally recognized Indian restaurant on our turf is Irvine’s Clay Oven, run by chef Geeta Bansal, the queen of modern Indian food, whose innovative takes on her country’s flavors and aromas (plus her insightful articles and interviews with other big-name chefs) have made her kitchen a destination for food lovers from across Southern California.
But beyond Bansal, Indian food can be found served every which way in Orange County: in industrial-park-adjacent lunch buffets (see: Vishnu), where you stuff yourself with samosas, stews, meats and more before waddling back to work; from suburban retail center storefronts that serve fast-food takes on home-cooked Indian food (see: Dude Where’s My Curry) as combo plates a la Panda Express; at Indian markets (like Nina’s Indian Grocery) that have so many shelves of spices and dry goods that they can’t help but put some of them together and serve it all up from a counter in the back; and of course in the dozens of white-tablecloth, sit-down restaurants (see: Punjabi Tandoor) where you can get everything from dosas to lentils to plates of chicken tikka masala along with pappadam, naan and a bomber of Taj Majal.
And this doesn’t even mention the much newer riffs on the cuisine, like the contemporary Indian street foods (aka chaat) found at Adya’s Anaheim Packing House stall or the naan-not-buns burgers served at Rockfire Grill.
Into this complex fray dropped a low-key offshoot of Artesia’s Wok N Tandoor, which opened earlier this year on Tustin Avenue in Orange. As an express version of the more upscale, sit-down sister restaurant of the same name (they opened two weeks apart), Orange’s Wok N Tandoor is an entirely different Indian food experience, not just for O.C. but beyond.
The name alone hints at the restaurant’s cross-cultural expertise — a well-defined mash-up of Chinese and Indian food that’s been a staple in the latter country since a small community of Chinese settled in Calcutta more than 100 years ago. Yet, even those who are familiar with the Szechuan-inspired sauces and masala-fied stir frys that define so-called Indo-Chinese cuisine will find Wok N Tandoor’s fast-food presentation a new adventure.
Hallmark dishes like Gobi Manchurian (crispy cauliflower in a sweet-salty gravy) and chili chicken (Szechuan chicken with ginger and fresh chilis) — which typify the Indo-Chinese combination of Chinese techniques with Indian ingredients — have long been found hiding amid menus of more traditional fare at places like Tustin’s Haveli and Annapoorna in Irvine.
At Wok N Tandoor, though, India’s favorite foreign cuisine is placed front and center, incorporated into more than just a few plates of wok-tossed specialties.
The Artesia location succeeds with a wide menu of fancy Bombay-style Indo-Chinese creations, like Szechuan prawns, kung pao veggies and deep-fried chicken “lollipops” along with a full bar. For Orange, the brand flipped the script again, focusing instead on counter-ordering, family-style grub with some house inventions that blend not only Indian and Chinese flavors but American ones too.
This means that in addition to the usual Indo-Chinese suspects (like gobi Manchurian, chili chicken and chow mein-style Hakka noodles) you can also get a cheesy tomato-sauce-free chicken tikka pizza, a lamb-stuffed, burrito-like kati roll or a heap of crinkle-cut fries tossed in a sweet and spicy Szechuan sauce, like some forkable Asian disco fries.
Add to that one of O.C.’s best lineups of chaat, those crunchy, puffy, sweet and tangy not-quite-snacks-not-quite-meals of puri and pau bhaji and more, made famous on Indian street carts but available at Wok N Tandoor in their intended quick-service form. If you only have stomach space for one, try the fascinating Chinese bhel — a volcano pile of crispy-fried noodles tossed in sweet chutney and spicy sour sauce.It might be the only Indo-Chinese dish that made it back over the border, landing back into the street-food culture of Southern China.
In a region awash with Indian restaurants of all styles and sizes, Wok N Tandoor’s express experiment is the one we’ve been so sorely missing. Finally, a hearty chunk of Artesia’s Little India has landed in Orange County. And what luck that it also came with a groundbreaking menu (and a case of fresh sweets from Rasraj) that goes beyond the intriguing Indo-Chinese emphasis to expose even more novel new nooks of a seemingly ubiquitous cuisine.
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SARAH BENNETT is a freelance journalist covering food, drink, music, culture and more. She is the former food editor at L.A. Weekly and a founding editor of Beer Paper L.A. Follow her on Twitter @thesarahbennett.