Indian Restaurant No Jewel of the Orient

Indian food can be dainty, warlike, suggestive, coy, ferocious, introspective, as perfumed as a rose-scented breeze blowing in from the Vale of Kashmir, as sultry as a Calcutta side street, as refreshing as a monsoon.

As nearly abundant in personalities as the Hindu pantheon, Indian food can beguile the taste buds, and it can also deliver them a near-fatal KO. Those scientists searching for nuclear fusion in a flask might investigate Madras curries, which at times seem to achieve it.

Whatever Indian food can be, it should never be humdrum, although this danger awaits any style of cooking that makes its way to these shores--many cuisines, when tossed into the American melting pot, come out assimilated and amorphous.

San Diego’s supply of Indian restaurants has remained fairly constant over the years, and it expanded only slightly when La Jolla’s Star of India opened a branch of the same name in the Lumberyard center in Encinitas. This is the sort of place where diners might want to park their karmas outside, because it is not the Indian restaurant that North County has been waiting for.

Lackadaisical Attitude

A lackadaisical attitude pervades the place and probably accounts for the lackluster cooking. On both of two visits, a television in the front room loudly played prime-time fare for the passing amusement of the staff, but it intruded terribly at the table. And the housekeeping seemed erratic; a table was set with a vase of four definitely dead daisies that should have been carted off to the flower morgue the previous day.

A basic Indian meal consists of bread, rice, a mildly or highly seasoned vegetable or meat main dish, a relish or two (there are dozens of chutneys and pickles from which to choose), and often yogurt and a dish of dal , a soupy preparation made from lentils or other dried legumes. The menu embraces 10 categories and offers plenty of choice within each.

Granting that variety is the spice of life, the variety of spicing at Star of India lends little life to the cooking. There is no law that decrees that Indian food must be hot, and indeed, were all dishes to rage, the effect would be boring. But those curries that should be hot are timorous at best, and temerity is not what one seeks in a gosht vindaloo (typically, a volcanic lamb curry) or a prawn bhuna (customarily a dish of some fire).

The best that can be said of Star of India is that it places three relishes on the table as a matter of course, and these can be used, when desired, to fire up dishes that need a spark or two to bring them to life. The selection encompasses a mild tamarind chutney, a stronger mint chutney and a “mixed pickle,” or chopped vegetables in oil heated with chilies and spices. This last achieves nearly the correct degree of piquancy and helps some dishes mightily--although when made properly, some dishes would not require its assistance. (An extreme example of potent Indian relishes is a special mustard pickle that is available at only a few import shops. This may be hard to believe, but by simply opening the jar and placing it at the end of the table, the mustard pickle will provide seasoning from a distance.)

Getting Started

The list of snacks offered as starters consists almost exclusively of battered and fried items. In this list are onion strips ( bhaji ), a little crisper than American onion rings and nice with the mint chutney, and various pakora , or fried tidbits of fish, chicken, vegetables and cheese. The menu advertised the paneer pakora as mint-filled slices of farmer cheese, dipped in batter and crisped; there was no evidence of mint, and the server said that, in his experience, mint had never entered the dish. At $6.75 an order, which is an excessive price for a plate of cheese fingers, the kitchen could take the trouble to make the dish correctly--who are they trying to fool?

The samosas , or stuffed pastries, were happier, particularly those filled with spiced lamb. The vegetable samosas , filled with a barely seasoned mixture of cubed potatoes and peas, were less interesting but did fit the Indian vegetarian motif; in both cases, bites of the mixed pickle brought out savory tones that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.

The curries tend to repeat from category to category, much in the way Chinese menus list various meats prepared in identical fashions. Thus chicken, lamb and shrimp all can be had (supposedly), in a vindaloo treatment, which usually means in a sauce that brings tears to the eyes. The lamb vindaloo , however, was anything but hot, and for some reason included bits of celery that had been thrown in at the last minute and were annoyingly hard--the sensation they provoked was akin to that of finding pebbles in a plate of pea soup. The same foods also can be had in saag , a mild, creamy spinach sauce. Other treatments include sauces of tomatoes, peppers and onions.

Shrimp should not necessarily be treated to an excess of spice, although they can benefit from it at times. Star of India’s prawn bhuna , advertised as in a “spicy gravy of coconut and onions,” was almost like one of those limp American stroganoffs that are based on canned cream of mushroom soup. A sweet note of coconut pervaded the sauce, which otherwise was remarkably bland and uncharacteristically pasty.

Vegetarian Offerings

Star of India does offer a good selection of vegetarian dishes, which, surprisingly, many Indian restaurants do not. These include mattar paneer (peas and cheese in sauce); channa masala (curried garbanzo beans); navrattan korma (creamed mixed vegetables) and Punjabi aloo , a very typical dish of potatoes, onions and tomatoes. The fanciest may be the vegetable kofta , or meatball-like fried dumplings in a mildly curried sauce of moderate interest; a subtler selection is the bengan bartha , or eggplant baked in a sauce that contains onions, peas and tomatoes. There was a richness to this last, but the kitchen sent it out cool, and it needed to be hot to be palatable. The basmati rice that accompanied all dishes also arrived at room temperature, a disgraceful lapse for an Indian restaurant.

The kitchen does shine when it comes to sending out hot, just-cooked Indian breads. Most are flat, and all arrive steaming and greasy (but delicious) with a film of melted butter. Stars in this department are the roasted, whole wheat paratha and the related poori , which is fried; aloo paratha , a fancier variation, are stuffed with potatoes and cilantro.

Indian desserts seem designed more to shock the mouth with sweetness than to cause any other effect, and Star of India offers the usual ones, including gulab jaman , or cheese balls soaked in syrup. This dessert is sufficient after one of the Star’s flabby curries; should a really sharp curry ever come your way, follow it with ice cream.