RESTAURANT REVIEW : Heat Is On at Unpretentious Bengal Tiger

The Bengal Tiger is the kind of restaurant that many people, including restaurant reviewers, love to discover. Tucked in a nondescript mini-mall at Burbank Boulevard and Hazeltine Avenue, it’s off the beaten track, unpretentious, and a culinary pleasure--a little jewel just waiting to be found.

I mean this figuratively, because the Bengal Tiger truly does not look like a jewel. Except for the linens on the table and the photographs of regal Bengal Tigers on the walls, visually this restaurant is pure, generic pizza parlor.

For those acquainted with Indian food, the menu holds no surprises. All the old stand-by Indian dishes can be had: somosas , curries, tandoori meats. The amount of chile is negotiable. The service is unobtrusive and prompt. Nothing about this restaurant stands out--except that the food is reasonably priced and consistently delicious.

Obviously, the word has spread. On a Tuesday night, business is brisk, and on a Saturday night, we have to wait 15 minutes for a table. The booths around the walls are full of dating couples; the tables in the middle of the dining room are put together for two birthday parties. Balloons bobble. Waiters whisk by with sizzling platters of meat from the tandoori oven. We decide to order a la carte and assemble our own seven-course feast.

My friend Ellen and I confidently order some of our dishes hot. “Hot’s very hot,” warns the waiter.

“Great,” I say. “That’s the way we like it.”

Hot, it turns out, is very hot. Although we have several dishes that are not hot, and some that are even cooling, the shrimp vindaloo and saeg paneer bring flushes to our cheeks, tears to our ears and every waiter, busboy and manager to our table, one after the other. Each one asks how we’re doing, is everything all right? I’m not fooled. They want to see if we can take the fiery heat. Sure enough, the next fellow even asked, “How are the spices?”

“Good and hot!” we gasp. “Very hot.”

The truth? The food is almost too hot for me. And the lassi (yogurt and rose water) drinks we’ve ordered, both plain and with mango juice, are too sweet to drink and thus don’t afford the cooling influence that they might have had. Halfway through the meal, I fall into a kind of pain-inspired torpor. I find myself staring vacantly off into space. My vision is blurred; I’m deliciously sleepy. “Now I remember why people eat hot food,” I say dreamily. “All that spicy heat triggers endorphins.”

Ellen is skeptical. “I don’t know about that,” she says. “I used to be macho about ordering very hot food. Maybe I’m just getting too old.”

The next time I eat at the Bengal Tiger, I’m with two other women friends, and we order all but one of the heat-negotiable dishes “medium” in terms of heat. And OK, I admit it: I discover that when my taste buds aren’t blazing, I taste more of the food. And what I taste is terrific.

The onion bhajis are like the happy marriage of the world’s crispiest, tastiest onion rings and a good hush puppy.

There’s a succulent, bright red, sputtering tandoori chicken and the excellent lamb Bengal--tender chunks of lamb cooked with lentils and fresh lemon. Although all the vegetable curries we try are well-seasoned and not overcooked, my favorite is baigon bhajee , thin slices of eggplant in a hot, not-too-juicy curry with tomatoes and onions.

In fact, we have no complaint with any of our seven courses: the three of us collapse into silence, passing the dishes back and forth, tearing naan , spooning on raita and eating so voraciously and enthusiastically that anyone observing would have a hard time deciding who, in this restaurant, the real tigers are.

Onion bhajis , 95; tandoori specialties, $6.95 to 10.95; garlic naan, $2.

Bengal Tiger, 14062 Burbank Blvd., Van Nuys, (818) 787-8488. Open for lunch seven days 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., including all-you-can-eat lunch buffet and a Sunday champagne brunch; dinner nightly from 5 to 10 p.m. Beer and wine only. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Parking lot.