Passage To India

Wednesdays at this popular Lawrence restaurant are chat nights, where diners can sample the light snack food often served streetside in India.

By: Kate and Tom O’Neill

Passage to India

Lawrence Shopping Center

2495 Business Route 1 South and Texas Avenue

Lawrence

(609) 637-0800



Food: Very good; large portions

Service: Efficient, aloof

Prices: Moderate; the buffets offer excellent value

Cuisine: Indian, with a regional balance

Ambience: Airy; pan-Indian eclectic

Hours: Lunch: Tues.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., Sat.-Sun. noon-3 p.m.; Dinner: Tues.-Fri. 5:30-10 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 5:30-11 p.m.

Essentials: Major credit cards accepted; liquor license; ample parking. Note: Wheelchair access is through a side door that leads to a private room, which may be reserved for private parties and thus is not always available. The restaurant suggests calling ahead to confirm accessibility.

Extras: The Tuesday dinner buffet and a weekend lunch buffet offer a wide selection from the menu; the chat buffet, on Wednesdays, offers all-you-can-eat popular, light appetizers. All buffets cost $11.95.

Directions

   This year, we discovered Indian food and found how much we’d been missing. A recent visit to Passage to India deepened our appreciation through a fine menu that kept its promise of "a culinary journey to the exotic."
   A small bar in the restaurant’s foyer welcomes guests. The dining room beyond offers a choice of large or small tables, chairs or banquettes along the deep blue walls and big front windows. Colorful tapestries, puppets and figurines transport the guest far from the restaurant’s prosaic location in the Lawrence Shopping Center. To ensure the success of this journey, we recommend the inward-facing seats, as the brightly adorned walls are more exotic than the storefronts across the parking lot.
   The venturesome diner can sample selections from throughout India, including the southern region, where the spices can be hot enough to melt your eardrums. Those who don’t fancy hot food will be glad to hear that the chefs will raise or lower the "heat" according to the diner’s wishes. Guests should mention their preferences when ordering. Our server informed us about this accommodation only after dinner, when he overheard us discussing the spiciness of one dish.
   The service was professional, but the staff seemed reticent. They offered advice when asked, but did not volunteer it.
   We stopped by on a Wednesday evening, when Passage to India offers a buffet table laden with chat, India’s light, popular snack foods. Usually eaten streetside, chat is enlivened by a broad spectrum of regional spices and topped with tangy chutneys.
   Our son, Tim, noted that the buffet ($11.95) was vegetarian — his preference — and volunteered to explore it further. All the buffet selections proved as fresh as though just served from the kitchen.
   Tim started with bel puri, a mix of puffed rice, wheat chips and peanuts that the diner can blend to taste with chopped onions, steamed potatoes and garnishes from small bowls of parsley, cumin, tamarind or spicy mint chutney. He proceeded through masala dosai, a delightful fried lentil-flour crepe, enveloping chunky mashed potatoes and peas. Dahi vadai were simple lentil and nut patties, enhanced by a dollop of piquant yogurt.
   A memorable yin-yang balance resulted from the next combination: ultra-spicy chick pea curry and pani puri, somewhat pasty potato pancakes. Still, there was more: pau bhaji, a beanless chili made of peas and vegetables, served sloppy Joe-style on a hot buttered roll.
   The selections from the chat buffet offered a balance of grains, legumes, vegetables and dairy that added up to an interesting and wholesome meal. Tim concluded happily with the buffet’s dessert offering, malai kulfi, a coconut-infused ice milk lightly flavored with cardamom and rose water.
   The à la carte menu tempted us with its wide range of dishes. We started with the assorted platter ($10.95): fish and chicken tikkas (skewered, boneless cubes cooked in a tandoor oven), samosas (deep-fried pastry appetizers filled with vegetables, among which eggplant was a stand-out); hot, crispy pakoras, perfect for dipping in a side dish of chutney; and seekh kabab (grilled "sausage" formed by molding minced lamb onto a skewer).
   Dahi batata poori ($3.95), small bread puffs filled with potatoes and black chickpeas, achieved a culinary golden mean between cool, smooth yogurt and spicy, chunky chutneys. The bread basket ($7.95) contained thick, tandoor-baked naan; spicy, whole wheat aloo paratha; and light puffs of poori.
   Machhi Malabar ($13.95) was tender whitefish, served in a rich brown sauce, sweetened with coconut and a wallop of curry. By contrast, murg biryani ($13.95), a rice and spice-infused chicken dish, was subtle, with intriguing layers of flavors derived from marinating, slow cooking and an amalgamation of spices, both earthy and hot. (We later found a recipe for this dish that called for well over a dozen herbs and spices.)
   Our request for a green vegetable brought enough minced steamed spinach ($9.95) for a party of six, but in small dabs it added interest to the meal. Long-grain basmati rice, served with the meal, offset the fire of some of the more highly spiced items. All of these flavors were enhanced by the smooth yogurt raita ($1.95) and gingery mango chutney ($1.50) — both "don’t miss" side dishes with this Indian cuisine.
   A full range of beverages that complement the cuisine is available. Tim enjoyed a mango lassi ($3.95). We found that both the Riesling ($5.75/glass) and Muscat ($5.25/glass) married well with the earthy cumin- and garam masala-based dishes, as well as the spicier curries.
   Among the Indian restaurants we have visited, Passage to India stands out for its success in presenting pan-Indian regional cooking and earns its reputation for quality. We enjoyed the opportunity to extend our personal gastromomic passage through India and look forward to further exploration of its vast culinary heritage.