RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Culinary Passage to India at Tazeen’s

“You know, I’ve never had Indian food,” warned the part-time volleyball star at the exact moment she was sitting down.

“No problem,” I said.

I wasn’t worried. Tazeen’s seemed supremely accessible, a place of light, cheerful food and evocative spice aromas.

It looks rather like a coffee shop: white walls, coral chairs, Formica table tops, a counter. There are movie-star photos on the wall, which seems apt since it’s only a block from MGM, except that they’re all photos of Indian movie stars. But Tazeen’s is tiny, as crowding the part-time volleyball star and her equally tall friends into one little booth demonstrated.

“There’s nothing that will disgust you about Indian food,” I said. “Well, there are those Indian pickles, which have so many spices in them they’re a little bitter. But they’re delicious, and there’s one here you probably can’t get anywhere else: chicken pickle.”

But Tazeen, the charming young owner of the restaurant, doesn’t bring out chicken pickle--her aunt’s recipe, she says--unless you ask (it tastes just like an ordinary Indian vegetable pickle, only made from chicken). And the other things proved no problem for the volleyball crowd.

The vegetable samosa, for instance. No problem. It had the all-American combination of peas, carrots, corn and potato. The aaloo bonda-- diced potato deep-fried in thin batter--had an exotic aroma of cilantro chutney; no problem. Full meals start with a carrot-and-lettuce salad and a big, irregular round of bread hot from the tandoor oven, like extra-thick pizza bread, only slightly blackened here and there. It was a big hit.

Dinner entrees come with dal-- a little pot of either plain boiled lentils or plain boiled yellow split peas--and a vegetable. This is usually one of the dishes from the menu’s sizable vegetarian list: simple sautees, usually, cabbage and tomatoes or potatoes and spinach, cheerily flavored with turmeric and cumin. Some of the vegetarian entrees are more elaborate, like the eggplant in a rich sauce of ground walnuts and tamarind.

The tandoori dishes were also perfectly unproblematic. Seekh kebab was your basic ground lamb kebab flavored with onion and parsley. Chicken tikka , chicken breast tenderized with a yogurt marinade, was bright with turmeric and cumin. Mutter keema , sauteed ground beef with peas, likewise had lots of cumin and turmeric. The volleyball crowd thought it tasted like very good ground beef with peas.

But I wondered about the rest of the dishes, which were remarkable for their subtle and unusual spicing. I was humiliated to say I had no idea what was in the deceptively named chicken curry.

And what’s in the aaloo ka salan ? The sauce has an unprepossessing dull yellow color, and may be thickened with ground onions, but beyond cardamom and clove I can’t guess what’s in it. Nor have I a clue about haray masalay ka gosht , lamb cooked very soft in a greenish sauce. The name means “meat with fresh seasoning,” referring to the cilantro in the sauce, but what’s the rest? Coconut? Asafoetida?

Surprisingly, the volleyballers had no trouble with these dishes. However, the house specialty, lamb biryani , was a problem. This pilaf is mixed with lamb fried very brown in the Central Asian manner, almost as intensely flavored as beef jerky. I guessed its exotic aroma came from ground ginger, cloves, saffron and something sweet and sour I couldn’t make out.

The part-time volleyball star, however, sniffed at it and said, “Windex.”

The blandest of the desserts--a sort of milk-flavored gelatine called faluda-- would probably be the perfect dessert to follow a spicy meal, if we’d ordered our dishes hot. Saveeyan , very fine brown vermicelli in milk with raisins, occasioned some critical comment (“Shredded wheat,” was the conclusion). Gulab jamun , however, was liked, and justly; this is one of the freshest and least soggy versions of these condensed milk balls in syrup around. The favorite was kheer , a very good, pretty liquid rice pudding with cinnamon.

The very best dessert, to my way of thinking, was shahi tukray , a sort of bread pudding in a rich spiced sauce of condensed milk. In this case there seemed to be a layer of dried fruit in it as well, but the bright yellow sauce had that same wonderful, magical spice aroma I’d tasted in the biryani .

The volleyball star, however, wrinkled her nose and pronounced an incontrovertible verdict: “Windex.” You can’t win them all.

Tazeen’s Indian Cuisine, 9748 Washington Blvd . , Culver City, (213) 204-5136. Open for lunch and dinner Monday-Saturday, dinner Sunday. No alcohol. Street parking. MasterCard and Visa. Dinner for two, food only, $13 to $38.