RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Successful Indian Spinoff From Melrose

Today, my friend Henry called me around noon. “What time should I come over?” he asked.

I’d had dinner with him the night before--we’d gone to the new Anarkali in Woodland Hills and eaten ourselves into a stupor. But I couldn’t remember making any plans for today with him. “Huh?” I said. “Are you coming over?”

“Lunch,” he said.

“Did I invite you over for lunch?”

He sighed loudly. “You have leftovers, don’t you?” he said. “Or have you already devoured them?”

I thought I did indeed have the leftovers, enough for a nice lunch . . . for one. “There’s hardly anything. I only took some of the vegetables.”

“Heat ‘em up,” Henry said. “I’ll be right there.”

Dutifully, I went to the refrigerator and poured the contents of the to-go cartons into pans. The bhindi bhajee (okra curry) was still a bright green, the okra still toothsome and tasty, even cold. The sag panir , a classic spinach curry with a simple farmer-type cheese, was made with fresh spinach and tomatoes that still looked and tasted fresh.

Reheated a day after they were served, these vegetable curries did not even begin to resemble the often overcooked vegetables so often found in Indian cooking. In fact, Anarkali’s cooking is characterized by a freshness of ingredients. I’m not fond of restaurant leftovers, but there I found myself, in the kitchen, sneaking bites of barely warm curries and begrudging my good friend Henry the meager vestiges of last night’s dinner.

Woodland Hills is lucky to have the first spinoff of the original Melrose Avenue restaurant. This new Anarkali on Ventura Boulevard has a white facade with its name in an arty purple neon scrawl. Inside, there’s a certain stark imaginativeness: The booths are cut into dramatic wavy shapes that jut out from white walls. The color scheme is essentially mixed reds, burgundies, crimsons and scarlets. Pink Fiesta tableware was purchased from the now-defunct Brown Derby. The overall effect might be dubbed “New Wave Colonial.”

Anarkali has been open for just under two months. The waiters are friendly, serious and still a little tentative. There were mild communication difficulties with my Americanized pronunciations of certain dish names, and the negotiations for levels of spiciness were not mutually understood. I have learned recently that my love of very hot food has diminished, somehow. I no longer consider weeping from spicy heat the great fun I once believed it to be. At Anarkali, I ordered the food medium to hot, and while the food was wonderfully fresh and tasty, I found it quite mild.

For the most part, the menu offers standard Indian cooking and will surprise no aficionados of Indian cuisine. Under the Chef’s Specials, however, there is a “ shahi “ lamb dinner for four to six people that costs $79.95. A 24-hour notice with deposit is required.

Portions are not unduly large. On one visit, a friend and I ordered seven dishes with an eye to leftovers. We ran into some trouble. First of all, we loved the onion bhajees . They had crisp fried onion exteriors and softer, bready insides--like the best combination possible of onion rings and hush puppies.

The vegetable samosas had a great flaky shell but a dull, purely potato filling--but not so dull that we didn’t finish every bite. In fact, we cleaned the assorted appetizer plate of everything--the succulent chicken tikka, the ground meat sheek kebab and the lamb tikka , even though the latter was overcooked.

Shrimp tandoori came to the table sizzling and was dished out with plenty of hot onions and bright green peppers. But it seemed to me that the tandoori oven was too severe for the little crustaceans, for they were cooked just over the edge into dryness and hardness. Nevertheless, we ate every bite.

We set to work as well on a lamb bhuna ; raita , naan , sag , pulao rice and a buttery tarke dal . The kitchen uses very little or no salt, which is healthful and pleasing for many customers, although I found the lamb and the dal vastly enlivened with a few swift shakes. The lamb also was overdone. Again we consumed every bite. There were a few minutes when we were so busy spooning food and tearing bread and scooping up bites that nobody said a word. At last my friend Kate looked up at me and said, “I feel frenzied. Now I know what great white sharks feel like.”

Needless to say, that time, there were no leftovers.

Anarkali, 22721 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills; (818) 704-0533. Lunch and dinner seven days 11:30 a.m. to midnight. Beer and wine. Street parking. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $18 to $40. Recommended dishes: Assorted appetizers, $4.95; chicken tikka, $6.95; vegetable curries, $3.95 to $4.95.