RESTAURANT REVIEW : Chameli--Who Needs the Meat?

A friend recently gave me a menu from Chameli, a new North Indian vegetarian restaurant in Rosemead, with the following recommendation: “I’ve already been there twice this week and I’m going again on Saturday.”

Curious to find out what inspired such devotion, I went along with my friend that Saturday night for dinner at Chameli. It’s in a clean, new building with the name of the restaurant scrolled in huge pink-orange neon.

Inside the restaurant, papyrus-patterned carpet covers the floors; on the walls are saris framed in glass so that they resemble abstract Expressionist paintings. On Friday and Sunday nights, Indian musicians perform on a small stage.

On that first Saturday night visit, we befriended our neighbors, two other women with whom we chatted and shared our food.

It was one of these women who, after studying the menu, cried out, “Oh! I kept looking for the entrees, but there aren’t any! It’s all vegetarian!”

Actually, the variety of vegetable dishes and the many different kinds of dal (beans and lentils), leaves one overwhelmed with options, rather than deprived of meat.

And the food at Chameli--hearty, flavorful and diverse--proves that life without meat could be splendid indeed.

The samosas--big, fat, crisp triangles of pastry bursting with soft potato and bright green peas--were delicious. So was the mild, sweet okra cooked with tomatoes and pomegranate seeds.

Pakoras , battered and deep-fried slices of eggplant, were good, not great. Fried paneer , a fresh Indian cheese, was bland and a little rubbery.

The best dish of the night was lobhia , black-eyed peas with a haunting, smoky flavor. We scooped up our curries with hot, bubbly naan and washed everything down with the yogurt drink, lassi. The mango lassi was cool and lightly sweet, but the mint lassi , spicy and salty, was so delicious and compelling I was tempted to make a meal of it.

There was so much more to try at Chameli, I returned to the restaurant as soon as I could manage for a series of back-to-back visits.

Luckily, because the prices are so moderate, one can work through the menu without undue financial strain. Ordering extravagantly, it’s difficult to push the bill for dinner for two to more than $30.

One of my favorite dishes from these meals was the alu tikki , spicy potato cutlets. Dahi bhalle, fried bean dumplings in yogurt, were good and unusual, sort of like bread cereal metamorphosing into a hamburger.

Everything is made with fresh ingredients. Saag , made with spinach in a lot of Los Angeles Indian restaurants, is made here in the Punjabi style, with mustard greens. This makes it more peppery, earthy.

Bhartha , roasted and mashed eggplant, was the one dish I tried that was so hot I could taste little but the heat. On the other end of the scale, Chameli makes a wonderful, velvety cream of spinach soup.

Over the course of my meals at Chameli, I found myself most drawn to the restaurant’s dals . There were tiny Indian chickpeas curried with loki, a tasty Indian squash. Perhaps the dish that most reminded me of meat in heft and richness was what the menu called “cuddy with pakora ,” light fritters in a rich, yogurt-based gravy.

The food is all dangerously compelling. I’m already plotting my next meal at Chameli from the take-out menu. And I am not alone.

Two days after I took a friend to Chameli she called me up. “That restaurant,” she said in urgent, hungry tones. “I have to go back there.”

Chameli North Indian Vegetarian Restaurant, 8752 Valley Blvd., Rosemead. (818) 280-1947. Open Wednesday through Monday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Parking in rear. Dinner for two, food only, $16-$30.