Banjara's curry flavors Banjara's curry flavors (September 03, 2004)

Masala dosa is best bet at Sunnyvale restaurant

By Mandy Erickson

There are restaurants for dating, and restaurants for birthday celebrations. Banjara, in Sunnyvale, is decidedly in the second camp.

With a 6-foot-tall video projection on one wall, plus two television monitors suspended from the rafters, dining at Banjara can be an entertaining affair. On a recent evening, the same tape of Indian music videos was playing on all three screens, mesmerizing diners with shots of chic young couples dancing in fields of flowers and on river barges.

The restaurant also has a generous supply of booths, some of which could seat a dozen guests, and it's so spacious you could throw a clamorous party without bothering other diners. All this makes it a good place to bring young children.

The draw isn't merely the festive atmosphere: Banjara offers some excellent eating, though the quality of the dishes can vary greatly. The spinach with Indian cheese ($9.95 as entrée, $11.95 for thali, or platter), for example, was some of the best I've ever had, but the lamb curry ($10.95 entrée, $12.95 thali) bore a disappointing resemblance to chili.

Like many Indian restaurants, the restaurant serves a lunchtime buffet ($7.85); Banjara's also includes ice cream and soda. Several of the dishes on the buffet were terrific. The bhindi masala, or okra curry, was beautifully mellow though well spiced with turmeric and cinnamon. It lacked even a hint of the slimy characteristic that okra often has.

The tandoori chicken, all drumsticks and appealingly bright red in the traditional tandoori style, were smoky and tender. The dal curry was moderately spicy, managing to be both comforting and interesting. Chicken makhani, boneless pieces of chicken in butter curry sauce, was smooth, rich and subtle.

The raita, yogurt flavored with spices and mixed with cucumbers and tomato, was especially good. In fact, it was good enough to enjoy as a soup, and a perfect foil to some of the spicier dishes.

But not everything was as sumptuous; for example, the aloo gobhi, cauliflower and potato curry. The potato skins in the aloo gobhi had a disagreeable texture, as did the undercooked onions. The cauliflower was flavorless, and though I could see spices in the dish, they added little.

The rice kheer, or pudding, is usually a personal favorite, but I could barely eat this version. The pudding was cloying, contained no cardamom and was topped with the unappetizing skin that forms on heated milk dishes.

In addition, the fried appetizers were long past their prime. The mixed vegetable pakora, or fritters, were stale and chewy, and the papadum, fried flat bread made of chickpea flour, was limp rather than crisp. To be fair, my dining companion and I had arrived relatively late, at 1:30 p.m., when the buffet had already been sitting out for a couple hours. But with lunch served until 3 p.m., the food should have a longer shelf-life or be turned over more quickly.

The ice cream was similar to the soft-serve variety found on boardwalks, only peach-colored and flavored with mango rather than vanilla. Neither high-class nor traditional Indian, it was still good.

A buffet lunch hardly calls for much work on the part of the wait staff, but the service was still a little disappointing. The waiter showed us to our booth, gestured toward the buffet table and disappeared. A busboy returned repeatedly to fill our water glasses, but no one asked if we wanted anything else to drink or to check if everything was OK.

Neither did anyone inform us that there were self-serve soda and ice-cream machines and that they were located around the corner from the buffet table.

Thankfully, there was better service at dinner. Our waiter was present and courteous, and credited with recommending the masala dosa appetizer ($5.95). This South Indian specialty consisted of a huge rice-and-wheat crepe filled with a vegetable curry flavored with turmeric and black mustard seeds. It came with three chutneys: mint and cilantro, red pepper and toasted coconut -- each moderately spicy and piquant.

The crepe is similar to Ethiopian injera, a spongy sourdough flat bread that soaks up sauce, but with a slightly nutty flavor. We tore off pieces of the dosa, using it to grab gobs of the pea-and-potato curry, then dipped the resulting parcel into one of the chutneys. It was so good, so buttery and fragrant, it was impossible to stop eating it, even with the expectation of a full meal ahead.

The dinner entrees also excelled: the palak paneer was a wonderful bright green, suggesting that the spinach was fresh and sparingly cooked, as it was. Suspended in the creamy spinach were small pieces of crisp ginger and the paneer, firm, moist cheese. It made for a terrific combination of textures.

Boti kebab ($11.95 entrée, $13.95 thali), cubes of lamb marinated in yogurt and spices, arrived on a fajita-type platter along with sauteed onions. The meat was tangy and tender, though we noticed that it toughened as it sat on the platter. It came with a tomato-and-cashew dipping sauce, which added richness, although the lamb was good either plain or dipped.

The fish masala ($11.95 entrée, $13.95 thali) was a light stew of mahi mahi in tomatoes, onion and ginger. The fish was well cooked, firm but not dry, and the stew pleasantly spicy.

If you order the thali meal, the entrée arrives on a metal tray accompanied by rice and four small dishes: rasam, a tamarind-flavored soup; sambar, lentil soup; raita; and dal curry. The raita was still good, but the dal curry was nearly flavorless and completely different from the one tasted at lunch. The soups were uninteresting and not worth more than a few spoonfuls.

The quality of the lassis, or blended yogurt beverages, were mixed. The mango lassi ($2.75), which I've often found to be so heavy it barely leaves room for dinner, was surprisingly light and redolent of ripe mango. But the salt lassi ($2.50) was too sour and not at all salty. When the bill arrived, it listed sweet lassi instead of salt lassi. The drinks weren't sweet though, so what we were served remains a mystery.

My recommendation for dinner at Banjara: Skip the thali. Spend your extra calories on the dosas instead. As for lunch, don't be embarrassed to go back for seconds and thirds. The good dishes are well worth it.

Dining Notes

Information

Banjara
407 Town & Country Village
Sunnyvale
(408) 737-9151
Open daily
Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Dinner 5:30 to 10 p.m.

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