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Bhindi Bazaar Indian Café
The Bombay beat goes on in the Back Bay
BY ROBERT NADEAU

 Bhindi Bazaar Indian Café
(617) 450-0660
95 Mass Ave, Boston
Open daily 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–11 p.m.
AE, DC, Di, MC, Vi
Beer and wine
No valet parking
Street-level access

Bhindi Bazaar (literally " okra market " ) is a commercial district in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay). Thus the name refers directly to okra (which the restaurant cooks beautifully) and less directly to the urban interchange of regional Indian cuisines, which has been pioneered in Boston by owner Samir Majmudar at his other restaurants: Bombay Bistro, Rangoli, and Tanjore. The new place is quite the prettiest of the group, and like the rest, it is perhaps strongest in the dishes from Bombay and the west coast of India.

To get right to the okra, you can have it Northern-style as bhindi masala ($11), or " Eastern and Central " as bhindi jaipuri ($11/$6.50 lunch) or bhindi aachari ($11/$6.50). I tried the last, which is a dish of okra, onions, and a few peppers with " pickling spices. " The spices turn out to be a Bengali-style mixture of whole seeds, including onion-flavored kalonji seeds, which reinforce the caramelized-onion flavor of the dish. The effect is like a dry gumbo, but perhaps more highly flavored. You can choose three levels of spice, which correspond reasonably well to the one-, two-, and three-chili-silhouette code of Thai menus. At lunch and dinner, dishes like this come as a cup or so of stew with excellent basmati rice flavored with a few cumin seeds, and a really superb yellow dal (split-pea sauce), also with cumin seeds. Cumin-on-cumin may sound like overkill even to a cumin lover, but I found it quite successful. At dinner, you get more of everything; at lunch, the kitchen adds an onion pakora, the most heavenly fried-onion appetizer of all.

The menu is lengthy and complicated, but we quickly found old favorites like the bhel appetizer ($6). This plateful of puffed rice, chickpea-flour crackers, sliced onions, tomatoes, and cilantro, with a tamarind-based sweet-sour-hot sauce, is like South Asian bridge mix. I can’t stop eating it. Chat papri ($6) is a similar idea, but with a wetter yogurt sauce, so it tastes like a pretzel salad. Shrimp balchow ($7) is a small appetizer with a barbecue tang and fresh-fried pooris on the side.

I thought the pooris were overly greasy our night, but was very impressed with other breads, such as the Peshawari naan ($3). This buttery flatbread with nuts and raisins can be leaden and greasy, but the slices we shared at Bhindi Bazaar were almost flaky and light. I also enjoyed a methi paratha ($4), beautifully translucent to show the green flakes of fresh fenugreek, with its intriguingly bitter herbal flavor.

Corn-cilantro soup ($4) reminds us of the popularity of American maize in Southern India. With cilantro and a hint of pepper, this is almost like a Mexican version of corn chowder, and very comforting as the weather turns cold.

Our favorite from Rangoli, the South Indian dosa ($8 plain, $9 rolled with potatoes, $10 with potatoes and lentil chutney, $11 with chicken, $12 with ground lamb), is even better here than I remembered it. The slightly sour crêpe is light and crispy, rolled into a long tube that overhangs the plate, and filled with savory stuffing of potatoes and ground lamb (we had the " kheema " ). This is served with a South Indian–style coconut chutney and a dipping bowl of very spicy South Indian vegetable stew (sambar). But I would recommend keeping the chutney caddy away from the appetizers on the table, and using the fresh mint chutney or the tamarind sauce on the dosa, or perhaps even the red-hot onion chutney.

Balti ($11 with vegetables, $12 with chicken, $13 with ground lamb) is a style of wok-cooked curries that actually developed in the Pakistani neighborhoods of Northern England. It has seldom reached Boston, so I can’t tell you if the version at Bhindi Bazaar is authentic or not. My guess would be that it isn’t, but it is an enjoyable mild curry with whole spices, at least in the chicken permutation. The vegetable korma ($11) is a very good job on a typical North Indian restaurant dish. The korma develops a rich, creamy sauce, despite the menu claim that it’s thickened only with yogurt and cashew nuts.

Chicken Caffreal ($12) is a Goan dish I haven’t seen in London or Boston before. The flavorings are lemon, cilantro, and green chilies. It’s rather Mexican, too, and I probably should have ordered it with more heat. Since Samir Majmudar has effectively responded to my years of whining about the stereotypical North Indian restaurant menu, I can now refocus my whine machine on another Goan dish that I’ve tasted in London: dhansak. These tamarind-based sweet-and-sour curries would be enormously popular with Bostonians who keep trying the General Gau chicken in every suburban Szechuan restaurant.

Bhindi Bazaar has a wine list, about which I can tell you that Kingfisher beer is a fine, malty drink with Indian dishes. Actually, you could have a glass of the Conde de Valdemar Rioja Reserva ($24 bottle/$6 glass) or the 2000 Oakley Vin Blanc ($4.50) before appetizers. The former is a very solid Bordeaux-style red, the latter a dry, fruity white with a little sauvignon blanc to it. The chai ($3.50) is brewed from leaf tea and spices in a china pot, and better for it. The coffee ($2) is described as " Indian dark roast. " I didn’t know that coffee is grown in India. The cup I had was a mild, Java-style coffee with perhaps a Vienna roast, a better cup of coffee than many American bistros can produce.

Indian desserts are not my favorites, but are done well here. The kheer ($4.50) is first-class rice pudding with bits of dried apricots and raisins, and a mild cardamom flavor. The rubri ($5) is not a common restaurant dessert, but a classical Indian sweet based on thickened milk and cardamom, like rice pudding without the rice. Kulfi ($5) is cardamom ice cream — are you spotting a trend here? — and less soapy than many, with a flavor like sweetened condensed milk. Bhindi Bazaar makes a pretty plate of gulab jamun ($4.50) by halving the golf-ball-size doughnut holes soaked in syrup. But they’re still doughnut holes soaked in syrup, no matter how nicely arranged.

Service on two visits was excellent, although a little slow with the check on one busy weeknight. The room looks like a converted Starbucks, with lots of mahogany and some stained chartreuse and ochre for the tabletops. Despite the quarry-tile floors and wall of windows on the street side, it’s small enough not to get too loud. There are amusing door handles and lamps, and a row of world-beat-pattern backrests along the far wall. This space never was a Starbucks — has any Starbucks closed anywhere yet? — so Majmudar either likes the way they look, or was hedging his decorative bet in case this block near Berklee wouldn’t support another Indian restaurant. But once the word gets around about the bhel and the dosa and the bhindi aachari — not to mention the Indian coffee — Bhindi Bazaar should have a good, long run.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com

Issue Date: November 21 - 28, 2002
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