Taj Mahal, Boise
Baba Ji Fish Photo by Darin Oswald / doswald@idahostatesman.com
The new Taj Mahal restaurant in downtown Boise serves Indian food in Hi-Def.
Blame that metaphorical leap on the flat screen TV hanging from Taj Mahal’s far wall. Eating while facing a digital swirl of Bollywood musicals naturally blends food and pixels in my head like coconut milk and curry. TV and Indian food, I realize, have a lot in common.
Now before you accuse me of downing too many Indian ales, let me elucidate: Indian food in America, like TV, can get pretty predictable. You’ve got your kormas and crime procedurals, your raitas and reality shows, searing vindaloos and sit-coms. Content doesn’t always distinguish one restaurant or broadcaster from another. The quality of the signal does.
Take a bite of Taj Mahal’s chicken madras ($14.99), for instance. At lesser places — where the cumin, coriander and other spices are tired, pre-ground or plopped in from a packaged base — that curry will have the low contrast and weak saturation of a 13-inch analog with rabbit ears. But grind your spices and cook from scratch, as does Taj Mahal chef/owner Farha Ishaq, and you’ve got a curry closer in culinary definition to a 50-inch HDTV. The cumin, the coriander and all the rest shine through like little flavor pixels, their distinctive tastes bright but blended, forming a creamy, Hi-Def whole.
Farha Ishaq and her family closed their seven-year-old Fairview and Five Mile location a year ago and opened this new restaurant last September. It’s in the second-floor, Downtown Boise space on 8th St. previously occupied by Gino’s Grill. With the move, the family added several new menu items.
Vegetable Pakora Kuddy ($12.99) is a Pakistani dish that son Danish Farha says his mom cooked when he was a kid. She douses several falafel-like fritters spiked with sliced vegetables in a yogurt and cumin sauce. It makes the fritters — which you can order on their own as an appetizer ($4.99) — a rich vegetarian meal with nicely contrasting flavors and textures. (The menu offers numerous other vegetarian and vegan items.)
The Baba Ji Fish ($17.99) is a dish the young Ishaq family ate when they were living in Dubai. Farha grills mahi mahi or swordfish (depending on which is fresher that day) with garlic, ginger, cayenne and pepper, then serves it on a sizzling metal platter over sliced onions and peppers. It’s kind of a Middle Eastern fajitas plate and a sauceless counterpoint to curry.
Also sauceless is the Chargha Lahori ($18.99). A skinless cornish game hen marinated with yogurt and spices, it’s roasted in a clay oven tandoori style. It too arrives on a sizzling platter crisp, burnished tandoori-red and delicious.
The Dal Makhni ($12.99) is a creamy red lentil curry with bits of onion, tomato, ginger, garlic and fenugreek. It tastes like celestial baby food (or, if I can’t mix my metaphors: a plasma screen with 1080p and surround sound).
The lunch buffet Taj Mahal serves ($8.99) Monday through Saturday. Although I’ve yet to experience a buffet (Indian or otherwise) that wasn’t a compromise compared to a freshly made meal, the flavors gleam here, if the food was less than piping hot on a recent visit. Still, the price, which includes a revolving selection of eight items, rice, naan bread, condiments and dessert, helps make the buffet worth considering again.
Because the non-buffet meals are made from scratch, don’t expect yours to arrive instantaneously. On a busy Saturday night, service was languid, if pleasant. Though our waiter was a bit green, owner Danish Ishaq dropped by nearly every table to offer menu suggestions and listen to comments.
For those who visited the Fairview Avenue version of Taj Mahal, you’ll find the new location smaller but more cozy. I miss the grand shrine that graced the old place, with it’s day bed, piles of pillows, sitars and tabla drums. The Ishaq’s built a petite version here too — and didn’t forget to frame it with that widescreen TV.
For more on this story go to the Idaho Statesman: http://www.idahostatesman.com/entertainment/story/1041691.html
