Passage to India

I haven't eaten alone and written about it--the whole point of this semi-literary endeavor anyway--since mid-October. That night, I had champagne and tuna tartare before seeing Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center (my, how sophisticated I once was; Saturday I was talking to a 25-year-old at Murphy's over Bud Light).

Tonight, largely out of jealousy of a friend's own culinary escapades downtown, I decided I'd take myself out for dinner. The point of an amateur food critic's existence is to forge ahead in cuisines and on highways she typically doesn't frequent (and 495 north at 6pm is one of those).

I'll admit, here in the obscure third paragraph of a Bethesda restaurant write-up, that I didn't complete the top 100 by the end of 2011. This is probably evident, as I am still writing up restaurants that happened pre-30, pre-Thanksgiving, and at restaurants even my friends don't recall joining me at. I cancelled my Citronelle reservation at least twice, considered it depressing to take a posse of girls to Inn at Little Washington (it seemed a bit too feminist even for my tastes), and Minibar I think has taken me off of their last-minute cancellation list. The 12 restaurants left are either 1. too romantic, 2. unjustifiably expensive, 3. in locations like Frederick, Maryland (I'll note that's 53 miles from me), or 4. ethnic food in Bethesda.

Ethnic food in Maryland generally has been delicious: Assaggi, Indique Heights, and Nava Thai were all classy joints with interesting foods. But parking there is never conventional, I usually go the wrong way on Wisconsin coming or going, and I most of the time stick out (I've found that typically only balding men reading newspapers eat alone at Indian places, so a grinning 30-something reading a book about Paris to me screams amateur food critic).

In any case, tonight I ended up at Passage to India, number 83 on the list. My Nepalese waiter was charming, my waitress with three gold teeth was attentive, and the bus boy thanked me every time he filled up my water glass.


The decor was fantastic: carved elephant sculptures in wood, a plump chandelier that looked like it would crash on the floor in relief at any moment, and old prints of Indian landmarks. I was impressed that even the bathroom door was intricate....


...And that I could cunningly take a picture of myself in the very detailed bathroom mirror.


I began with pappadums and tamarind chutney, mint raita (yogurt sauce), and a spicy tomato sauce. And what I considered a fairly gigantic glass of red wine.


The beautiful thing about Passage to India is that it breaks down its menu by regions in India. Because it was impossibly difficult for me even to select a corner of India I wanted to sample, I ordered the Badshahi Khazana, the latter word apparently meaning "treasure." This dinner offered me only the choice of meats; at the choice of the chef, multiple appetizers and entrees would then be served to me on a silver platter. The idea of having food delivering to me on a silver platter and being thanked for that was too irresistible.

First, I had chicken tikka on the left, moist and tender and delicately yogurty. In the middle, a sort of lamb kofta, generously imbued with onion and that coupled exquisitely with a bit of cucumber and the mint raita, and finally tandoori chicken on the far right.

Then came the platter, with its own charming, bevelled ramekins. On the far left was creamy chicken with almonds, a tender lamb dish, spinach, and daal (lentils), all to be added to a small mound of cashew/raisin topped basmati rice.



















I also ordered the garlic naan, which is usually shameless in its butter-slatheredness. This naan had roasted garlic rubbed into all its bready peaks and valleys.

Thankfully, dinner ended with a delicious whimper--rice pudding with cardamom, pistachios, and almonds--my tucking my book away in my purse, and an incrementally stronger resolution to knock out the dozen restaurants left.