RESTAURANT REVIEW : Indian Food Filled With Imagination

Most Indian restaurants around here suffer from the Eight Dish Syndrome, a dangerous constriction of the menu to about eight overworked dishes. You know the ones I mean: tandoori chicken, lamb with onions, saag paneer . . . whoops, almost dozed off there.

Now along comes India’s Cuisine to rock the boat with an expanded menu of distinctive dishes. Not dishes from unheard-of parts of India. Owner Som B. Rehil is Punjabi, like the majority of our Indian restaurateurs, and his restaurant is faithful to the cooking style of his region. He’s just decided to air out his imagination.

Before the expanded menu, India’s Cuisine was just suburban ethnic, with few surprises. Now it’s suburban ethnic with style. Rehil has had to expand his dining room to accommodate the throngs that fill the place every weekend.

Low prices must be one of the reasons they come, because these prices would be competitive in the Punjab itself--in the more upscale restaurants anyway. Nearly all the vegetable dishes are less than $5 and many of the meat specialties are available as half orders in the same price range. What’s more, portions are exceedingly generous, so half orders usually suffice.

The trade-off is in the service; when it’s busy here, service comes in spurts. First you sit for a while, wondering whether anybody in the restaurant knows you exist. Then a waiter rushes over and gets you to spit out the order. Finally you are dizzied by a flurry of dishes that a team of waiters airlifts to your table in one massive operation.

It’s best to order several breads here to scoop up the saucier dishes and wrap around the broiled meats. All the breads are made in the blazing hot clay tandoor oven, and the chefs tend to make them thin and crisp, like pizzas in chain restaurants. The gobhi paratha is the superstar. It’s a whole wheat bread stuffed with spiced, minced cauliflower, the crust studded liberally with sesame seeds. Another to try is onion kulcha, a plain leavened bread stuffed with onions and brushed with a mild mint sauce.

There are two tandoori roast meats you should not miss. The best dish in the house is the rack of lamb--as well it should be. At $12.95, it’s by far the most expensive dish on the menu. It consists of five large, meaty chops, blazing red in the center and charred black around the bone, served on a bed of fresh salad vegetables that pale in comparison. As you bite in, you catch the fiery taste of chili and aromatic spices from the marinade, and the chop nearly melts in your mouth. When I make up my list of the great dishes of Ventura Boulevard, this dish will be at the head.

You also want to order the tandoori game hen, a more tender, less ruddy version of tandoori chicken. The chefs sprinkle this dish somewhat brazenly with lemon juice, and the spices kind of crust together on the skinless surface. It’s wonderful.

One more dish, chicken mumtaz, deserves mention. It’s a rare bird indeed in an Indian restaurant: stewed chicken served dry, without its sauce. The chicken is sauteed in a yogurt-based sauce with spices and herbs and just falls apart when you poke at it. The catch is, they only cook it on weekdays.

Rehil has added a number of vegetable dishes to his new menu. Bhindi bhaji is stewed okra with plenty of cumin and cinnamon. No Cajun would recognize it. Shimla March, named for the Himalayan town of Simla and the month of March, is a bell pepper stuffed with curried potato. It looks like Indian cafeteria food.

And for those who dote on the square cubes of cheese that Indian restaurants serve in peas and spinach, congratulations, you have been acknowledged. In shahi paneer, you can get a whole plateful of them in an unctuous cream sauce. Bet you won’t find that one on anybody’s Punjabi Eight.

Recommended dishes: onion bhaji, $1.95; rack of lamb, $12.95; half tandoori game hen, $3.95, (whole $7.95); half chicken mumtaz, $4.75 (whole $9.50).

India’s Cuisine, 19006 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana, (818) 342-9100. Lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday, dinner from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Friday through Saturday; brunch buffet Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Beer and wine. Parking lot. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $15 to $25.