At the risk of invoking a tired cliché, Henrietta’s newest
Indian restaurant really is a phoenix from the ashes. Brothers Gurpal and Harcharnjid Singh
opened their first restaurant, Namaste Diner, on West Henrietta Road in July 2008, an
outgrowth of their successful Indian grocery store down the road. A bit over
three months later, a kitchen fire closed the
restaurant “indefinitely.” By the end of the year, Namaste had been closed
permanently. Late last year, Wild Noodles on East Henrietta Road closed its doors, and
the Singh brothers took over the lease on the space, resurrecting their
restaurant and restyling it Haveli Indian Cuisine.

Havelis, private mansions built for
India’s
oldest and richest families, have the popular cache of
Indian opulence and luxury. The brothers Singh played on this image in naming
their restaurant. They offer a rich and varied cuisine embracing dishes from
northern to southern India,
and even reaching as far as the United
Kingdom, where Balti
cuisine originated. There are humble dishes like chana
masala and saagpaneer, and
more opulent dishes full of rare spices and cream, like chicken kesari and lamb rogan josh. You
can even find northern and southern Indian
street food like chaat
and dosas. But the former Wild Noodles space, with
its leftover décor and sticky floors, is far from a mansion. The brothers have
done their best to dress the place up with white table cloths and cloth
napkins, but the feel of a takeout joint lingers. The good news is that once
you tuck into a plate of Gurpal Singh’s chaat you’ll forget all about the location’s shortcomings.

Chaat is the equivalent of fast food all over northern India.
Made at streetside stalls from ready-made ingredients
including roasted potato, fried bits of bread (papri),
or fried puffs of bread (puri), in addition to chana (chickpeas), gram beans, and a combination of raita, tamarind, and cilantro-mint chutneys and a sprinkle
of chili powder or cayenne for that final zip, chaat
is food on the fly — fast, tasty, filling, and above all, cheap.

Gurpal Singh, the chef at Haveli,
offers five different kinds of chaat: papribhalla, belpuri, dahivada, chana, and samosa chana — all intensely flavorful and instantly addictive (chaat, $2.99-$6.99, most $3.99). In addition, on the lunch
buffet ($8.99-$9.99) and dinner buffet ($11.99, Mondays and Tuesdays only)
diners have the opportunity to assemble their own chaat
from an array of ingredients, including puffy, crunchy puri
and vadai (lentil doughnuts).

From the other end of the country comes dosas
— a full page of them on the menu, bewildering in their variety and number. The
main variation between dosas is thickness: masoordosas are about as thick
as a crepe, and ravadosas
are paper thin, almost cracking apart at the touch of a finger. Masala dosas of both varieties are intensely spicy. Spring dosas are filled with fresh vegetables. All of them are
gigantic. Our rava masala dosa
was surely 16″ from end to end and nearly 10″ wide, a massive crepe folded over
on itself in thirds and filled with a bright yellow, fragrant mixture of
curried potatoes ($7.49). True to its kind, the crepe was nearly translucent,
yet surprisingly durable, fully capable of acting as a scoop for the potatoes
within. I’m not sure how anyone could eat this as street food without someone
to help them hold it, but for food like this it’s worth sitting down (dosas, $5.49-$7.99).

In addition to these delights, Haveli turns out a
solid selection of Indian restaurant stand-bys, including a chicken makhani, where the butter and not the tomato took the front
seat, wonderfully balanced and utterly delicious ($10.99). A subtle variation
on the same dish, chicken kesari adds toasted mustard
seeds and whole curry leaves to the mix, pushing the tomato into an even
quieter supporting role in a dish bursting with both fire and the scent of
curry ($10.99). Malaikofta,
another standby, was prepared in a perfectly creamy sauce, the paneer and lentil dumplings tender and savory ($10.99). A
more unusual variation on roughly the same theme, kadipakora, combined vegetable fritters with a tangy,
yellow yogurt sauce enriched with turmeric, garam
masala, and a bit of grated ginger ($8.99). Even the navrattan
korma — that traditional dumping ground for leftover vegetables — was first
rate, full of fresh veggies and clean, rich flavors ($10.99).

The saagpaneer
and the chana masala were the only disappointing
dishes on the traditional menu. The saagpaneer, a dish made of pureed spinach combined with cubes
of Indian cheese, is usually full of deep flavors and most of the time chock
full of paneer ($9.99). The portion I had from the
fresh pan on the lunch buffet was bland and devoid of tasty cheese. Until I
tasted the chana masala here, I’d never had a version
of the dish that I didn’t love. Like the spinach, this lacked flavor, with the
disagreeable grainy texture of chickpeas stewed until they broke apart and
started to dissolve ($9.99). Fortunately, two dishes were not enough to sway my
overall favorable impression of Gurpal Singh’s
talents as a chef.

Until I ate at Havali, I was
unaware that Chinese food was popular in India. Just as Chinese immigrants
adapted their cuisine to American tastes and ingredients, Chinese immigrants to
Kolkata created a cuisine appealing to the Indian palate. Some of those dishes
are now finding their way into American Indian restaurants, as reflected by the
small selection of “Manchurian” dishes on Singh’s menu.

The gobi
Manchurian, for instance, looked strangely familiar ($7.99). Both my companion
and I thought we’d gotten the wrong dish: what had been put in front of us looked
like General Tso’s chicken or sesame chicken, not
like anything we’d ever seen in an Indian restaurant. The preparation is
similar to sesame chicken, although apparently cauliflower (gobi) is often substituted for meat in deference to India’s large
vegetarian population. Cumin, coriander (both fresh and ground), onions, green
chilies, and a bit of tamarind (to give it that sweet and sour bite) are stir-fried
along with chunks of cornstarch-battered, fried cauliflower, creating a dish
that is recognizably “Chinese” (to the extent that the American-born General Tso’s chicken can be said to be Chinese) but entirely, even
forcefully, Indian. The only question is how an American Chinese dish found its
way to Chinese restaurants in India….

This article appears in Mar 31 – Apr 6, 2010.