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“Welcome to Mumbai,” said a member of our lunch party who had already arrived at the restaurant. He was enjoying a drink served by a charming young lady dressed in a traditional waitstaff outfit complete with a pillbox hat.
You'll find no slum kids at Tandoori Palace, but plenty of traditional Indian cuisine at this recently opened restaurant in the Vistana Oeste commercial center on the eatery-buzzing Santa Ana-Belén road, west of the capital.
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The ambience is Indian at Tandoori Palace, in the Vistana Oeste commercial center on the Santa Ana-Belén road. |
Ronald Reyes | Tico Times
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Opening an Indian restaurant in this country is a formidable challenge. Costa Rican palates are not always enthused by the combination of exotic spices or the tongue-tingling, chili pepper-induced heat. However, not all Indian cooking is hot, and at Tandoori Palace there's something to keep everyone's taste buds happy.
The restaurants owners, the gregarious Abdul Shamsuddin and his wife, Shahida, lived in Canada for more than 30 years before moving to Costa Rica and deciding to open a restaurant.
“We've had to soften our recipes and make them less piquant, but we can always give them a stronger bite at the customer's request,” Abdul says.
“We import all our spices, as some are impossible to find here,” adds Shahida, who loves to cook and authors some of the restaurant's specialties, such as beef or lamb stew from Pakistan, which needs to be ordered in advance. However, most of the cooking is done by chef Chit Singh Kuwar, recently arrived from Mumbai.
The Shamsuddins have gone to a lot of trouble to create an authentic Indian feel in the restaurant's decor. The color scheme of dark brown, cream and gold and the decorative grilles with flickering lights on the walls are an attractive addition to the surroundings. The TV, however, is an incongruous addition. A large print of the Taj Mahal and other, somewhat garish ones of Indian scenes decorate the walls.
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The all-you-can-eat buffet includes 11 dishes. |
Ronald Reyes | Tico Times
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After ordering our drinks, we perused the excessively large and elaborate menu, which offers a mind-boggling variety of meat, chicken and seafood curries, as well as tandoori specialties and vegetarian dishes. Mix-and-match is a good idea here, though the grapevine reports that some of the menu items have been disappointing. Prices range from ¢2,000 to ¢10,000 ($3.50 to $17), including tax.
Our party of six, all connoisseurs of Indian food, were not an easy bunch to please, but we thought the hot buttered naan bread, straight out of the huge tandoor oven in the kitchen, was divine. We all opted to try the restaurant's main attraction: an all-you-can-eat lunchtime buffet priced at ¢7,500 ($13), not including tax.
The 11 dishes offered vary from day to day. On our visit, there were pakoras, mixed vegetable fritters, and a potato and sweet green pepper combination, both very tasty. The rice flavored with cardamom and sprinkled with macadamia nuts was also very good, as was the rice pudding, the only dessert offered.
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Palak paneer and tandoor-fresh naan bread. |
Ronald Reyes | Tico Times
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The beef and chicken in the curries were very tender, but doused with far too much sloppy sauce, as were the two lentil dals. They all tasted much the same, some with curry, some without, and it was hard to distinguish any subtle flavors or differences between them. Everything was rather too gentle for us, as we were not looking for a soft introduction to Indian cuisine. However, I did receive a rave review from a very happy customer.
The diners that day were from England, Canada, the United States, Belgium, Turkey, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and Costa Rica. No doubt most of them were there because they already appreciate Indian food. Therefore, knowing what palates to please must be a real quandary for the Shamsuddins, and they should be congratulated on making an effort to fill a culinary gap in this country, where little Indian cuisine can be found.
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