Spices and Sweets
You don’t ordinarily expect to find a signed photo of Mr. T in a suburban Indian restaurant, but Passage to India isn’t ordinary. The chef, who calls himself Miah, is from Bangladesh by way of Saudi Arabia and England. Mr. T is just one of the Valley celebs who dine here.
Miah’s restaurant, in the old Taj of India space, has a lurid red tone, due to its curtains and Tiffany light panels, but the tables are attractive and set with red and white cloths. You start your meal with the crisp lentil-flour wafers called pappadums and some very fresh mango and tamarind chutneys.
It should be pointed out that although the owner is from Bangladesh, his menu doesn’t serve any dishes of his homeland. Most of the fare served here is familiar north Indian food. But even in India, the restaurants serve mostly north Indian dishes; it’s hard to find a Bengali restaurant anywhere.
Though the mixed tandoori platter takes more than 15 minutes to arrive, it’s worth waiting for the huge chunks of chicken tikka, the tandoori chicken properly blackened around the edges, the lamb kebab and the ground lamb seekh kebab, here mildly spiced but good and fresh. (They’ll make any dish spicy if you ask.)
A good accompaniment to the tandoori platter is Peshawari naan, a sweet flat bread also cooked in the tandoor oven. With its sugary crust and stuffing of chopped nuts and raisins, it’s quite exotic.
One of the best dishes on the menu, popular in England but rarely seen on Indian menus in this country, is egg curry. It’s very basic--just two hard-boiled eggs steeped in a sweet curry sauce with a few stewed potatoes--but it can be immensely satisfying with white rice, or with the restaurant’s excellent peas pullao, a yellowish pilaf mixed with fresh peas.
Many other things are worth ordering from this menu. Lamb pathia: stewed lamb presented in a sweet tomato and cream gravy. Chicken vindaloo: chicken and potatoes in a spicy, vinegary sauce. Dal saag, a casserole of lentils mixed with gently pureed spinach, is Indian kid food. If you wash everything down with a 22-ounce bottle of the light Indian lager Himalaya Blue, the waitress will give you a souvenir Himalaya Blue key chain.
Bengalis are known throughout India for their sweets, so it’s not surprising that this place makes a wonderful rice pudding (kheer). This version, colored yellow with saffron, gets subtle flavor and texture from finely minced nuts.
It’s a little hard to picture Mr. T eating rice pudding. But hey, this is Passage to India.
BE THERE
Passage to India, 14062 Burbank Blvd., Van Nuys. Lunch 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. daily; dinner 5-10 p.m. daily. Beer and wine. Parking lot. All major cards. Dinner for two, $19-$29. Suggested dishes: tandoori mixed grill, $9.95; egg curry, $5.95; dal saag, $6.95; Peshawari naan, $2.95. Call (818) 787-8488.