Bites Nearby: Indian Restaurants Around Town

While I've been lucky to have received delicious home-cooked Indian food since childhood, I only started appreciating the unmatchable flavors, textures and aromas of this type of cuisine later in life. I usually judge Indian restaurants by my favorite items: saag paneer (a spinach dish), naan (fluffy bread), raita (a yogurt dish), and basmati rice. However, there's a vast range of Indian food out there, and I've learned to branch out beyond the standard north Indian fare available at the typical restaurant. I've tried Indian food in all corners of the world, from L.A. to NYC, Denver and Chicago, Japan, Europe, and, of course, India. Here are my selections for three great Indian restaurants in and around South Pasadena:

, 966 Mission Street, South Pasadena. Phone: (626) 799-2200.

Located just across the street from the Gold Line Mission Station, Radhika is a blend of modern and traditional, and its mellow, minimalist interior is a nice change from the ornate decorations found in many other Indian restaurants in this price range. Owner Karan Raina hails from Kashmir, the incredibly beautiful, mountainous region currently suffering from political and religious fighting in the north of India. He named the restaurant after his mother, Radha, which is also the name of an incarnation of a Hindu goddess. In fact, the owner's parents, who divide their time between India and South Pasadena, eat at the restaurant when they're in town. 

Raina relocated his restaurant to South Pasadena last year, two years after closing his long-time Shopper's Lane, Pasadena location. The prime spot attracts a good number of customers, and the new Radha Room lounge next door offers appetizers and drinks in a casual setting. Raina, who worked for the prestigious Taj Hotel Group in India and trained at the Pusa Institute of Hotel Management, has melded American and Indian food concepts to create new tapas-style appetizers for the Radha Room. He spoke of a squash medley, containing butternut, yellow, and Italian squash and Punjabi-style soft tacos, which contain meats and/or veggies in a naan bread wrap.

The restaurant focuses mainly on north Indian cuisine, and Raina cooks custom-made items that aren't on the standard menu: dal (lentils) and rajma (a red kidney bean dish) made in his special Kashmiri style are a few of the offerings. He and his cooks add the herb asafoetida, called heeng in Hindi, to make it more authentic and flavorful, like in his native Kashmir. Another specialty is meat, and he says Radhika's lamb chops are prepared in the Kashmiri style.

Since I'm vegetarian, I sampled the veggie dishes, including my usual favorite, the saag paneer, which is a creamy spinach dish with handmade soft cheese cubes. I enjoyed this with a garlic naan (a bread that goes well with any kind of curry). The spice level was just right, as I'd requested mild (I somehow didn't inherit my ancestors' ability to handle very spicy food. I made up for it by learning Hindi years ago, which I practiced the evening of my visit to Radhika!)   

The next item I tried was the malai kofta, another favorite that I order only when I'm really indulging, since it's made with a flavorful and creamy tomato-based gravy. The kofta is a soft, spicy dumpling made of cheese and vegetables such as potatoes, carrots and peas, is in the savory sauce. Radhika served up a delicious version, with a fairly large portion in a nice bowl. 

My dad tried the chicken tikka, a dish of small pieces of boneless chicken marinated in spices. While it's traditionally cooked in a clay oven called a tandoor, which gives it a distinct flavor, this restaurant did not have a tandoor when we ate there. The best part about ordering chicken tikka is when the waiter brings out a sizzling dish of aromatic chicken, which was not the case that night. While it didn't really matter to me, since I don't eat meat anyway, it was a bit of a let down after all the other items impressed us. I asked them to re-heat the dish for my dad, and they obliged. 

We completed our meal with a dessert called kulfi, a north Indian treat one of my favorite aunts has perfected. Kulfi is a hard ice cream made with sweetened milk in a variety of flavors, such as pistachio, mango, cardamom, saffron and rose. It's one of the most popular dessert items. Last year, I went to a kulfi shop by the beach in Mumbai, where I could sample over 30 flavors, and the vendors cut the ice cream for me by the slice! Radhika serves up kulfi with style in a beautiful large champagne glass. The small blocks of sweet, authentic Indian ice cream were the perfect end to my meal, and reminded me of the kulfi I had tried in India.

Bhanu's Restaurant and Grocery, 7246 Rosemead Boulevard, San Gabriel. Phone: (626) 291-2101.

A new addition to the Indian restaurant scene, this place next to the Trader Joe's at the intersection of Rosemead Blvd. and Huntington Dr., is one I've been following since before it opened its doors in the fall. Named after the owner Bhanu, who catered out of her Temple City home before opening up a storefront, this restaurant also sells Indian groceries, very convenient for customers who wish to eat and pick up their favorite spices, snack items, and in my case, sandalwood soaps.

Bhanu's is a very casual setting (it's like an Indian diner!), with about 10 tables adjacent to the grocery aisles. It's all about service and food at this no frills eatery, and the restaurant offers one of the most reasonably priced Indian meals I've found anywhere. For $6.99, you can order a vegetarian thali (a set meal), with a serving of two different vegetable items of the day, one bean soup, a serving of rice, your choice of bread, and yogurt. Not bad for a meal that is very filling and delicious (two non-ravenous diners could even share one thali). The chicken thali offers a choice of chicken item for just $1.00 more, and my dad seems to like the chicken here, which is made in a clay oven. The best part is that this set meal price is the same all day long, even for dinner, when most other restaurants tend to raise prices.

The restaurant also serves up South Indian style dishes, which are harder to find in the San Gabriel Valley (we usually drive out to Cerritos when we're craving South Indian.) For those who haven't tried this type of food, it's nothing like the dishes from the north of India. I'm a fan of an item called a dosa, a paper thin crepe with a spicy potato filling and served with mild coconut sauce and a hot vegetable and lentil soup called sambhar (warning: this soup can be spicy!) Bhanu serves up the cheapest dosas around, at about $4.00, almost half of what other restaurants charge, but Bhanu's variety are much more oily and less well-done than seasoned South Indian places. 

If you're in the mood for snacks, Bhanu's is just the place, since they offer a range of fun, tasty appetizers not found at fancy restaurants. Try the pani puri, a fried, hollow, round chip filled with spices, water, tamarind, potato, onion and chickpeas (the dahi puri is the same thing, but with yogurt to temper the spices). I think these might top the list of most popular street food items in India. 

If you're feeling really adventurous, go for the pav bhaji, a Mumbai snack that's also a rare find in restaurants here. Pav is a fluffy bread bun served with bhaji, a very spicy, orange-colored, potato-based mixture of vegetables, including tomatoes, green peppers, onions, peas and more. 

Bhanu's sweet and mango lassi (cold yogurt drinks) are just amazing, and I'd stop by everyday for one of these if I could. Just the right amount of sugar and rose water in the sweet lassi makes it a great pre-meal treat. They also have a variety of home-made sweets in their display cases in the front, and these sweets are sold per piece (perfect for sampling) or by weight for larger orders. 

, 314 E. Huntington Drive, Arcadia. Phone: (626) 574-1400.

This restaurant, located in the Arcadia Gateway Center strip mall, is operated by an elderly couple from Chennai, formerly Madras, India. I've only eaten here once, since I heard they had good dosas, the South Indian crepe-like specialty. The restaurant actually serves up both North and South Indian dishes, however the place is better known for the South Indian specialties. 

The interior is quite nice, with elegant, colorful tapestries decorating the walls, and a large dining area. In fact, I was quite surprised to see such a nice interior given the generic strip mall exterior. However, from the moment I entered, I was given the cold shoulder by the elderly Indian gentleman from South India who I would soon find out wear many hats: host, waiter, and chef. My efforts at small- talk to warm up to our host/waiter proved futile.

He took our orders, giving us stern looks if we asked any questions or even broached the possibility of a substitution. "No extra idlis for you," my dad was told, reminiscent of the popular "Soup Nazi" episode on Seinfeld years ago. My mom, however, got lucky and managed to get an extra idli, a soft, fluffy rice patty served with the sambhar, lentil and vegetable soup. Just like the amazingly good soup served up in the Seinfeld episode, these idlis were delicious, perhaps the best in the San Gabriel Valley. 

I ordered a mango lassi, which turned out to be more of a Kerns mango nectar kind of a drink rather than the creamy yogurt drink I had expected. When I pointed this out to the host-waiter-cook, he declared it was indeed a lassi. Even though I'm aware of what a lassi is, I didn't argue and just drank it.

The dosas came out piping hot, and while my parents' masala dosas were a bit overdone (extra brown), my rava dosa (which is made of semolina and has more texture and onions cooked into the skin of the crepe) was perfect. 

I couldn't pass up dessert, and chose the gulab jamun, a soft, spongy donut-hole-like treat soaked in sweet syrup. The best gulab jamun, in my opinion, is served warm, but this one was room temperature. I flagged down another waitress, who obliged to bring up the matter with her boss, the elderly Indian man. After a bit of coaxing, he finally agreed to microwave it, and it turned out well.

As we got up to read some of the framed newspaper reviews on the wall, the elderly waiter slowly began talking to us about the restaurant and its clientele (lots of lunch patrons from nearby businesses and doctors from the local hospital, it turns out). He suddenly opened up about his life, where he was from, how his marriage was arranged, and even offered us a behind-the-scenes look at the kitchen. We had to figure out a way to end this surprisingly long conversation, and I soon realized it's sometimes better to have a quiet waiter.

Go for the dosas and idlis, and know what you want ahead of time. I'd suggest the combination dinner. 

Enjoy!