Portfolio at NYU

Posted 01.05.08
Passage to India
Touring the Indian subcontinent one dish at a time.

By Freda Moon

Published in the New Haven Advocate on August 30, 2007

Coromandel
185 Boston Post Rd., Hitchcock Plaza, Orange. (203) 795-9055. coromandelcuisine.com.

With expanses of mustard yellow and green, interrupted by red and purple trim and a series of off-kilter oval mirrors, Coromandel's interior feels like a funhouse for parrots.

From the ceiling hang colorful floral light fixtures of upside-down blue, red and yellow glass tulips. Even the plates, napkins, tablecloths and tea-light centerpieces are a colorful mismatch. But what's most unique about Coromandel is the menu itself-a compilation of dishes from across the massive Indian subcontinent.

Rather than sticking to the commonly-imported chicken tikka masala or saag paneer, naan and samosas, Coromandel lingers in the South-in provinces like Kerala, Tamal Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka-where fish, rice and coconut overtake the meat, dairy and grains more common in the North. In these Southern dishes-like the Kerala Brahmin delicacy, avial (potatoes, carrots, yam, banana, eggplant and squash cooked with curd and coconut, cumin and curry, $11.95)-the spices almost sparkle.

Coromandel (part of a five-restaurant Connecticut chain, born in Darien) makes room for the popular Indian restaurant staples on its expansive menu, but it's in this "other India" that it sets itself apart. That's because, despite an abundance of good and great Indian restaurants, there are few other places in Greater New Haven to try many of Coromandel's regional Indian dishes.

"We have not Americanized our recipes," says manager Gopinath Nair. "That's something we're very proud of."

It is the dosa-a paper-thin, rice flour crepe stuffed with spiced, mashed potatoes and onion, and served with coconut chutney and a spicy, soup-like sauce called sambar-that drove me to seek out Coromandel. When we lived in New York, at 28th and Lexington in the heart of the South Indian restaurant district, my husband Tim and I fell in love with dosas.

Coromandel only offers one option, the masala dosa appetizer ($9.95), but we order one with excitement, along with an Indian King Fisher beer for Tim and an exotic-sounding Masala martini for me. I hear my drink being shaken in the kitchen, mingling with the plucking of classical Indian guitar, as the dosa makes its way to the table. The appetizer tag is deceiving. This is a full-sized (enough food, easily, to function as a main course), spectacular dosa-a crisp, tubular creation, stuffed with aromatic, herb-infused potatoes, seeds that pop in the mouth, curry leaves and nuts. The sambar is spicy and rich, off-set by the cool coconut chutney.

The martini, on the other hand, is essentially a glorified Cosmopolitan, a stiff pink drink with a lime wedge. It was bracing-free of the syrupy sweetness of so many fruit-flavored cocktails-but there wasn't much masala to it, only a faint whiff of ginger.

By the time we'd devoured the dosa-taking turns tearing at its paper skin, or dunking a spoonful of its stuffing into the sambar-the rest of the food had arrived.

Each entree was a large white bowl full of a thick stew and accompanied by basmati rice, with bits of fruits, nuts and peas. Tim's malai kofta ($11.95), a dumpling dish often made with fruit, was instead a combination of vegetables (carrots, green peas, potatoes and cauliflower, with paneer cheese, corriander, cumin and cilantro). The dumplings swam in a warm, burnt orange-colored gravy, a mildly sweet compliment to their unusual nuttiness.

My avial was delicate but hearty, and tasted first of fruit, then squash and carrot, then a hit of a spice-surprisingly hot, but quick to fade. The difference, Nair explains, between South Indian dishes like avial and the Northern ones that many Americans are accustomed to, goes beyond main ingredients. Many of the same spices are used throughout the country, says Nair, but they're mixed differently in the South, where the climate is hotter and there's an emphasis on "cooling spice combinations."

Like Chinese before it, Indian food has been whole-heartedly embraced by the expanding universe that is American food culture. And like China-another sprawling, infinitely more complex country than is demonstrated by a syrupy helping of Panda Express sweet and sour pork-much is being lost in translation. A restaurant like Coromandel is the much-needed corrective to pink-dyed, faux-tandoori chicken-and what a corrective it is.