Chai Pani, Decatur GA

Chai Pani is a newcomer to the Decatur food scene, one featuring Indian street food, and for the time being, very well received. It occupies the space in Decatur that Watershed vacated, the one next to Farm Burger. If you’ve not been to this part of the world before, please note it’s useful to take along ten or so quarters. A lot of the parking close to this restaurant is metered, and parking adjacent to the building hard to come by.

Outside.

Inside.

Mango lassi.

The style of service in this restaurant changes depending on when you arrive. If you go during lunch on a weekday, it is counter top service. You help yourself to drinks, cutlery, and a number is placed at your table for delivery. At night and on weekends, they have staff take your order at the table.

Okra fries. Recommended in general, reminiscent of good fried okra. Good for those with carb limits.

One thing I’ll mention up front is that this isn’t the easiest place for a diabetic to be. Most dishes are heavy in starch, and wraps and rolls tend to contain rice. All is not lost. The chicken burgers and lamb “sloppy joe”s are workable entrees and as a not-so-starchy side, I’d recommend Chai Pani’s okra fries. There are, of course, large dinner salads, that in our experience, are good.

Bhel puri. Puffed rice, chickpeas, flour crisps, onions and cilantro.

Corn bhel. Also really tasty.

The real draw here, are the chaat, the street snacks, a kind of eating I’ve not run into before. When I took my daughter and the bhel puri arrived, she said, “I’ve seen this served in a cone on television”. Both bhel puri and the corn bhel are reason enough to come here. A plate of this, some roti, a soda and a couple samosas would leave my wife happy as can be.

Sloppy Jai (lamb sloppy joes). The shoestring fries are excellent.

Chicken burgers, again, with those excellent fries. My wife finished the fries off.

If there’s one consistent effect when you come here and eat, it’s that there is an amazing “first-bite-wow” effect when eating here. Americans aren’t used to hot Indian spices. They get the majority of Indian food from buffets, where all the aromatics have been steamed off the food. But here, with almost every bite, you get a hit of fresh spice, recently ground or cracked, and often cooked in oil or ghee to release the aromas and the flavors. This “hit” is what is so intoxicating about this place, especially when you first bite into a dish you’ve never tried before.

Kathi kabab roll, and bowl of daal., The daal runs a little thin.

Papadam, a hand sized spicy cracker. The other bread offering is roti, a tortilla sized unleavened bread.

Samosa.

What can we recommend? Almost everything seems good at this point. I wasn’t as pleased with the kabab wrap because it had more rice than I could handle for a meal, but the grilled chiken was excellent. Sloppy Jais I think everyone should try. The more timid maybe can go with a chicken salad, a samosa or two, and one of the bhels. Spend as much time as you can with their chaats, because those really are the star here. And oh yes, the beers here are good, with half a dozen respectable craft beers available.

I’m coming to think this is a great place to be introduced to Indian food. Have a friend who is a little picky? Take them here first, before throwing them into the whole of Indian cuisine. Yes, a tandoori chicken spot isn’t a bad first time spot either, but those are often mom and pops with a hole in the wall ambience. This place is clean, brightly lit, fun. Worst case, your friend has a glass of wine or a beer, nibbles at a chicken burger, downs some fries and maybe have a bite or two of a chaat, all in good fun.

Chai Pani is very highly recommended.

Chai Pani
410 West Ponce De Leon Ave
Decatur, GA 30030
(404) 378-4030

 

Haveli Indian Cuisine, Norcross GA

Haveli Indian Cuisine is part of a small Atlanta chain of restaurants, unnoticed by newspapers and social media. I’m not sure why. Lively spicing and rich flavors are the hallmark of this restaurant, along with a tendency to cook their foot on the spot — though these days they do have lunch buffets.

Photo taken when Haveli was first opening.

Outside sign of more recent vintage.

Their samosa have a kick to them and are good eaten in or takeout.

Nicely spiced.

Their naan isn’t bad either.

dal makhani

Tandoori chicken and tikka masala work well here, and Haveli’s curries have some kick to them. They have a dish called a jalfrezi which seems an Indian equivalent of ropa vieja, rich in tomato flavors and really worth some consideration.

Lamb jalfrezi. I really enjoyed this dish.

Mutton curry. Earthy meat with some bones, sauce has some spice.

I’ve eaten in and taken out, both more than once, and right now, I’m tending to eat out more than in. I like the staff, sweet natured generally and helpful. The inside is serviceable instead of pretty, and has the feel of a restaurant still ironing out their kinks. On occasion they lose their air conditioning. I would call ahead if you’re considering dining in.

Haveli Indian Cuisine
1480 Beaver Ruin Road
Norcross, GA 30093
(770) 820-0070

 

Darbar, House of Kababs, Lawrenceville GA

Darbar is a brand new eatery on Pleasant Hill Road, east of I-85, one still in the process of being made. They have a large working space, and although they’ve begun the task of shaping it into their own, it still has a partly unfinished look. I’m sure that over time they’ll remedy that, but if you arrive in the next few days just realize that some eateries have a long gestation period.

The menu  is small, the choices just a few. There are kababs, some curries, some combos of kababs and curries, breads, rice, desserts. I ordered a seekh kabab and a chicken qorma (a curry) when I came. Staff came out, insisting that I buy naan, that their food was spicy. I had to say I was a diabetic, naan and I don’t really get along.

I was happy for the spicing though. Too much Indian food in this city is dumbed down for Atlantans who can’t eat spicy foods. About half the so-called “Cajun” in Atlanta is a shadow of what Cajuns really eat. Darbar has plenty of spice in their food, and not so much that it’s overwhelming. If I eat, say, a grilled jalapeno or two, I end up wanting bread by the end of the meal. Not here. There was enough spice to let you know it was there, but not enough to ruin your day. I liked the spicing a lot.

Darbar, House of Kababs
1455 Pleasant Hill Road
Lawrenceville, GA 30044
(678) 205-8777

 

Rajbhog Cafe, Duluth GA

Rajbhog Cafe is located in a strip mall on Pleasant Hill Road, across the street from the new QT, behind the Krispy Kreme. I’ve been watching it go up for some weeks now, curious about what it would finally end up being. As the eatery is now open, we can now find out.

It’s a chain, it turns out, with locations in New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina. It is associated with the Rajbhog Sweets and Snacks company. There are a stack of their products in a display as you enter the place.

I snagged a menu as I entered. There weren’t many offerings to my eye. There are a list of snacks, some chaats, a do-it-yourself salad choice, and a couple entreés. I ended up getting their chicken kabobs. They had samosas but as a diabetic, not as if I’m going to indulge in those. I’d need my family to explore this place’s starches.

Chicken kababs

It’s a pretty place, with nice chairs and clean. You buss your own tables. They do bring food to you. Nothing is expensive, and the place is clearly geared for take out.

I liked the kababs I had. I suspect that more of the “action” is in their starches, which I can’t really indulge in. But the kabab was promising enough that I’ll get my family here sometime. Any grade I give this place now has to be incomplete, but for now, recommended.

Rajbhog Cafe
1500 Pleasant Hill Road
Duluth, GA 30096
(678) 924-1440

 

Zyka, Decatur GA

From the north, Zyka is conveniently located at a fork in the road. Scott Boulevard goes one way, Church Street another. As Zyka shares a common space with a Montessori school, on the Church Street side there is a really large nice parking lot that is hard to miss. On the Scott Street side the divided boulevard makes it impossible to approach without turning around.

This isn’t a place concerned with presentation. Food is purchased at a countertop and served in plastic. Often the foods are oily and it’s hard to fish out the “good bits”. That said, the meats are all Halal and when things are good here, they’re often quite satisfying.

The things to go for here are the Tandoori chicken, the naan, the samosas. We found the Tandoori chicken and samosas to be good, and consistently spiced. The chicken 65 and its cousin, chili chicken, are bland and not really noteworthy. This might be in part to the very poor hot peppers we had on our visits here. They were advertised as “chilis”; with few exceptions they might as well have been bell peppers. This place has quality control issues with its heat, its spiciness. I’ll note I even asked once to make the chicken 65 spicy, and it came out as bland and lifeless as before.

If you watch this video of chicken 65 preparation

Do you think they use 65 different chilis in this preparation?

you’ll note the dish is prepped with plenty of chilis, and that the video author apologizes for how spicy he makes his product. So to be sure, there are different notions of how spicy this dish should be. Even so, I want some spice, and not just a red and underspiced rendition of Kentucky Fried’s best.

I liked most of the other dishes I had. It’s tricky finding diabetic safe vegetables on Zyka’s menu but it is possible.

If you watch the crowds here, they are every color of the rainbow, wearing everything from dress clothes to shorts and slippers. Waiting to place an order, the crowds often extend across a third of the floor, and much of that business is “to go”. Individuals, couples, and large families eat here routinely, so Zyka is surely doing something right.

Zyka
1677 Scott Blvd
Decatur, GA 30033
(404) 728-4444

Another view of Zyka is presented here.

 

The chicken 65 at Mughals, in Norcross

We’ve spoken of Mughals Restaurant in Norcross before. It’s located in the strip mall on the northeast corner of Jimmy Carter and  Singleton Road, and you can’t see it from the road. Just turn in and it will be there.

When you get there, you’ll order at a counter. They’ll give you a number and  you can sit.

There is a small eating area in front of the counter, and a larger one, their Banquet Hall, to the left as you face the counter. I’ve always found the man who staffs this eatery to be exceptionally patient. And his chicken 65 (explanation of the name is here; video of this dish is here) is good.

There is chili flavor in this fish, and notes of ginger. Neither is overwhelming, but are there. This dish seems to me to be the South Asian answer to the French Fry: something good, a guilty pleasure driven by good spices and the just right amount of hot cooking oil.

Mughal’s Restaurant and Banquet Hall
5265 Jimmy Carter Boulevard
Norcross, Georgia 30093
(770)-446-6941

 

Viceroy Royal Indian Cuisine, Dunwoody GA

The Viceroy is a restaurant completely under critical radar, yet at the same time it’s achieving impressive credentials on Urban Spoon. It’s one of these places that the media and bloggers have missed, but still has a reasonable following. It’s a bit too far for me to frequent at night, but approachable during lunch hour. That’s a shame, as Viceroy is largely a buffet place during the day. They have interesting options during the night, including a 4 step scale for heat in their foods.

It’s not easy to drive by the Viceroy. You have to enter the same shopping center in which J Alexanders is found, the Perimeter Village Shopping Center, and drive towards the back. Pass the Wall-Mart and eventually you’ll see the Viceroy. The entrance is neat, but otherwise a classic strip mall store front.

Once inside the restaurant is good looking. The waiters are neat and precise, dressed in white, and along one wall there are buffet choices. The buffet covers a lot of ground, in terms of eating, and can roughly be divided into 4 sections. The first section contains sauces. There are things like chutneys, chilis, mint sauces, raita, and hot sauce for those who need it. Next to the sauces are desserts. This section contained things like fruit firni when I was there. The third section has vegetable dishes. Pakoras, dal makhani, chana saag, and a vegetable biryani were items I recall in the vegetarian section. The final section began with a small oven containing tandoori chicken. It continued with a goat curry, a chicken makhani, and a vindaloo, as I recall.

left: curry - middle: basmati rice - right: vindaloo - bottom: chicken makhani - top: tandoori chicken

If you order food, a nice basket of naan will appear on your table.

Viceroy has a good naan.

I liked what I ate here. The tandoori chicken was the best of the foods that I tried. It was rich in flavor, and I was surprised they could manage that, given the buffet setup. The fruit firni was delightful, and the rest of the dishes I’d rate as good. The vindaloo was very underpowered, but if you read the self description in Urban Spoon, they’re aiming for Atlanta style heat, not Indian style heat. If you want hotter dishes, come at night and order something “hot” or “Indian hot”.

As I came during lunch, I can’t tell you how good this place will be during dinner. But the lunch was good enough, and the service good enough, that if I lived in the area I would have certainly been back for dinner.

Verdict: Neat, flexible eatery with good service and good food. Recommended.

Viceroy Royal Indian Cuisine
4719 Ashford Dunwoody Road
Dunwoody, GA 30338
(770) 353-3000

 

Santoor Indian Cuisine, Alpharetta GA

I first starting coming to Santoor Indian Cuisine when it was a respite on my commute home. I had discovered how to get from exit 8 off 400 to Holcombe Bridge Road using back roads and Santoor was along the way. It was a good place to relax and eat and then continue the commute, on days when freeways were more parking lot than functional roads.

These days Santoor isn’t along the path home and I don’t go nearly as often. But I visited, to see what kinds of food they have, and whether they were as good as I remembered. I ordered papadam, a spiced cracker, and lamb masala. It took a bit to get my waiter to spice it up. I finally had to tell him I’d had the house vindaloo before and liked it.

It’s a quieter place, with a female owner and thankfully, a tendency to keep spicing to reasonable levels. Santoor’s lamb masala was a good tasting plate of food with a spice (as in pepperish heat) level higher than that of some place’s vindaloos. That there was room for more heat in the menu was gratifying. The papadam was crunchy and a worthwhile side. The naan wasn’t as perfectly crisp and dry as I’ve had in other places, but it was still good. Not many places offer the range of meat dishes at varied spice levels this one does, and I’m crossing my fingers Santoor survives these hard times.

Verdict: A place I’ve favored for years. Everything from mild foods to blazing hot available here. Highly recommended.

Santoor Indian Cuisine
3050 Mansell Road
Alpharetta, GA 30022
(770) 650-8802

 

MGR Palace, Stone Mountain GA

MGR Palace is one of a number of restaurants in a mall near Wall Mart on Rock Bridge Road that include Cici’s Pizza. The eatery is roughly across the street from the Metro Diner. I’ve been here a couple times, and in general I’ve liked the food. It is, however, the kind of cuisine that leaves me fighting for words to describe it. What doesn’t help is that just down 78 in Decatur is the Udipi Cafe, also vegetarian and Indian, and though similar, they have very different cuisines. I’ve been to both, and entrees at one I like I can’t find at the other.

If a rule of thumb at Udipi might be “it’s hard to go wrong with chickpeas”, then a rule of thumb at MGR Palace is “it’s hard to go wrong with potatoes”.  It’s very hard, however, to remember the names of the dishes. Thankfully, MGR Palace has the equivalent of a combination plate called a thali. So this day I ordered a thali and that’s what I’ll be describing. It’s a good looking plate of food, with or without the naan (flatbread).

Along the bottom of the plate are three vegetable curries. The left side has a chutney (pickles), a yellow fruity dessert and above it, yogurt with some vegetables. Along the top are two different kinds of rice. The right side has two soups, a soup called a sambar being the upper of the two. The sambar is a little spicy.

What can I say? I liked and ate pretty much all of it. I thought the curries were excellent, the dessert was a pleasant suprise. The rice I mixed in with other foods or ate plain, and I like the sambar a little better as a soup because of the spice. The food is not especially hot but it is nicely spiced. The naan was about as close to butterless perfection as can be. I tore it into pieces, dipped it into the yogurt and the soups, or used it as a wrap for chutneys or curries.

The clientele here is largely Indian, with the occasional collection of curious Americans. Staff, in my experience, is friendly and helpful.

Before leaving, I ordered samosas to go. A samosa is roughly akin to an empanada, a stuffed pastry, and MGR Palace’s samosas are really good. I’ve also had MGR Palace’s dosai, a kind of crepe, and they are quite good as well. Finally, MGR Palace is inexpensive. The thali is one of the most expensive dishes on the menu, and it cost 12 dollars. Most entrees are under 10 dollars.

Verdict: Surprisingly good Indian food outside 285. Very affordable, and very highly recommended.

Madras Sri Ganesh Ram Palace
1825 Rockbridge Rd
Stone Mountain, GA 30087
(770) 413-1415

Notes: Meredith Ford Goldman has an excellent review of this restaurant.

 

Bhojanic, Decatur GA

Bhojanic is a modest restaurant in a strip mall less than half a block north of the North Decatur Road-Clairmont Road intersection, on the right side as you’re heading north on Clairmont. It caught my eye one day when I was heading to the Brick Store Pub; the words “Indian fusion” ended up stuck in my head. I was curious what an Indian fusion restaurant would be like, and for that matter, so did my family.

Inside, the restaurant is full of mirrors, and that caused trouble with our seating. It took a couple tries and a new table to find a place where the sun wasn’t being reflected into my eyes. Once seated, we had a glance at the menu and looked for food we could try. It was recommended we try a thali, a kind of combination plate, as we were first time customers there.

My wife ordered samosas, and my daughter ordered a mango lassi. We all ordered thalis as well. My wife and I had a meat and 2 veggie thali and my daughter a meat and 1 veggie thali. In terms of meat entrees, my wife and daughter ordered a chicken tikka masala and I ordered a chicken curry. For vegetable dishes, my wife ordered the combination lentil dish and chole, I ordered a zucchini side and a chole, and my daughter had the chole.

The samosas were decently sized, and were good tasting, nicely spiced, richly flavored. There were only two of them, and they seemed a little expensive after having been served samosas at Mughal’s and Udipi Cafe. They came with a dark sauce and a green sauce and my daughter warned us that the dark sauce, the ‘tamarind’ sauce, wasn’t anything we’d like. My daughter was spot on. The green sauce was something, however, we liked a lot.

The mango lassi is an impressive drink,

mango lassi

and the thali plate, once delivered, is an impressive array of food:

The thali is delivered in a metal tray.

From upper left to upper right, the plate contains: chole, chicken curry, and the zucchini dish. Lower left to lower right the dish contains raita (a cucumber yogurt sauce), rice pullao with folded chapati and a half circle of papadam (lentil cracker, a little spicy), and then a salad with some chutney.

The chicken dishes were universally liked, though my wife wasn’t terribly fond of the sauce the chicken tikka was in. My impression, getting a bite of the tikka masala, is that it was better than my curry. The choles were good. My wife loved the combination lentils, enough that she would have ordered a bowl of it alone. My wife is very fond of dal makhani and this dish was close to dal makhani in flavor. The raita provoked an indifferent response, as did the chutneys. My daughter and I traded chapati for my wife’s papadam.

My wife ordered more bread at the end of the meal, some naan, and it came buttered, which she didn’t want. We ate it, it was fine bread, but if you want plain naan, you’ll probably need to state that before you order. Otherwise I would have to say the service was attentive and good. Issues with musical choices: as much as I appreciate the light 1970s listening provided,  I’d rather hear a modern and more diverse sound, something that wouldn’t leave my daughter wearing her iPod.

Verdict: For the most part, good food and good service. A good place for a beginner with Indian cuisine. Recommended.

Bhojanic
1363 Clairmont Road
Decatur, GA 30033
(404) 633-9233