Aww… I miss the indian restuarant that closed here a few months ago. Curry chicken with basmati rice and beans and chickpeas or something. I loved that place. At least the african restaurant that replaced it has fried plantains.
I personally can’t stand Vindaloo, its too spicy, but I recommend butter chicken which is a red creamy dish good with naan, briyani (its a rice with meat), nihari- a slow cooked beef dish, very tasty- but you will I think only find this in a pakistani restaurant, chiken tikka masala is also a safe bet.
One good buffet in Schaumburg usually has goat curry. It is really good.
AFAICT
Sag=Spinach, not like the canned boiled crap my mother servered. But seasoned so that it is delicious.
Paneer=homemade cheese
mashroom=mushroom
matter=peas/chickpeas
So I have seen Matter Paneer is cheesey pease and is unbelieavably good. Sag Paneer, spinach and cheese, and mashroom paneer. Any of them are great. Even vegetables I find obnoxious in other cuisines are appealing as prepared in Indian restaurants.
Lamb Pasanda is a medium type of lamb curry, it usually seems creamier than lamb curry and is also great.
Tandori chicken is great for even the unadventurous. I has a bit of a smoky flavor from the tandori, so if you don’t care for smoky foods, don’t order it. Otherwise this is usually a favorite as is butter chicken which appears to be tandory chicken drowned in a butter sauce.
Vindaloo often has potatoes as well as being a very spicy curry. I started with this and loved it. We went to an Indian restaurant because of Red Dwarf. My husband kept saying he does not like hot foods once ate all my vindaloo before I got any because he wanted potatoes. We found he does not like jalopena peppers, but otherwise does like spicy food, especially Indian.
Get Nan no matter what else you order. I also like the vegetable biryani.
Food allergy issues drove me to the Hare Krishna cookbooks- they think onions and garlic are evil for some reason. If I can figure out whether substituions are possible I might look into it- thanks.
Wait, you went to the Hare Krishnas because you are allergic to garlic & onions?
Try Bawarchi.com. The rest of my cooking links are at work, but I’ll try to post them on Tuesday.
::Hangs head in shame::
Yep. It’s lots of recipes I can make without substitutions, and it’s not like I have to actually do the chants while cooking it and then dedicate it to Lord Krishna like the preface says you should.
Try
- Nihari
- Biryani
- Karahi (personally, I prefer the ‘red’ one, although the ‘white’ type is good too)
‘Qeema’ (minced meat) with chillies is good too.
Wipes drool off his desk
Once you get into Indian food, you’ll realize that what’s served in most Indian restaurants is not typical of what most people eat from day to day. (For one thing, it’s a lot heavier than most home cooking.) Some dishes like chicken tikka masala aren’t even authentic (as noted above), while much of the curries are typically Punjabi food. As is true with any country, the cuisine varies tremendously throughout the land. Goa, for example, was a Portugese colony, so the food is influenced by that, and people in Kerala are supposed to eat a lot of fish.
I agree with the suggestion to look at Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbooks. They’re well written and discuss the regional differences in the food.
I have always loved spicy foods. I drank a whole bottle of tabasco when I was 9 without any distress just to show I could. I’ve always been impressed by vindaloo, since it has enough heat to make me sweat - most food served in restaurants, even if described as ‘extremely spicy’ is blander than how I would prepare it, but vindaloo is probably a little hotter than I would choose to prepare a dish (esp. if anyone other than me was eating it).
My favorite local Indian restaurant (India Palace, on Preston Rd. in Dallas, TX) only had one dish on the menu with more ‘heat stars’ than vindaloo - lamb phaal. I had to try it.
I will never order it again. It was good, but it was simply too hot for me. The only way I could finish it was by putting sweet tamarind chutney on it, along with lots of rice and bread - and I don’t normally like to mix sweet flavors with meat.
Phaal is insane.
A lot of those dishes are more macho posturing than anything else. And I’ve enjoyed habanero and Scotch bonnet peppers!
My motto: If you have to use pepper extract additives (ie concentrated capsaicin) to arrive at that level of heat, rather than using natural hot peppers, I’ll skip it.
All I’ve seen in this thread are good suggestions, but what is being left out is the aspect of smell.
Smell is not always a telling factor in the quality of food, but it will immediately be obvious to the newbie. Many times the smell emerging from an Indian restaurant is exotic but not unpleasant, but sometimes even when the food is top notch in flavor and quality, the smell that hits you reminds one of nothing so much as 50 marathon finalists setting their sweaty armpits on fire. Strangely, the smell often has nothing to do with the flavor, which is excellent.
Go to a full meal restaurant. Pick a place that lists ingredients and either announces the fire quotient of a dish or will adjust it for you. Munch on papadum while you peruse the menu. Be sure to order a naan or poori bread, they’re wonderful. If you like the basic ingredients of a dish (the meat, the vegetables, etc.) give it a shot. It’s hard to go wrong at a good establishment. You’ll be amazed at how something so familiar can be given a flavor so wonderfully unusual.
Oh, and you’ll probably smell funny for a day or two afterward.
Thanks for the great suggestions, all. I’m really excited about giving it a try now that I have some clue what to order. Will be easier to convince BF to come with me, too.
He’s not yet a Doper (just recently started lurking), but he respects the font of knowledge that is the SDMB 
If you get something with chicken, try to order something specified as “white meat,” because otherwise it tends to be really chewy and not that good. I think it must be the same part of the chicken that nuggets come from.
That has not been my experience at all!
Ack! My post has been devoured by hamsters!
Well, that’s OK. Here’s a recap of the major points I wanted to make in my last post:
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There are lots of different cuisines lumped together under the term “Indian food.” I’m a fan of the cooking from everywhere in India, but I’m most strongly addicted to the South Indian stuff. I especially recommend the masala dosa (a thin pancake-like thing with spiced potatoes inside. You rip off bits and dip them into two sauces–a red thing called a “sambar” and a pale green/almost white coconut chutney. You might want to see if you can also get some rasam on the side as a dipping sauce. It’s usually eaten as a soup, but sometimes people dip stuff into it.) No worries about encountering unusual meats–like wombat spleen or fruitbat heads–in South Indian cooking. Traditionally, South Indian food is vegetarian.
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Southern cuisines are best done in places that–hey!–specialize in South Indian cooking. If ever you find yourself in the Columbus, Ohio area, we can go to Udipi (a wonderful South Indian place) or The Dosa Corner (a South Indian place with slightly different stuff, because the cook is from a different region of South India than the guys who run Udipi. The Dosa Corner does a great job with dosais.)
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If you feel intimated by a masala dosa, start off with a rice dish. Yogurt rice, tamarind rice, tomato rice, coconut rice, lemon rice…they’re all good. (I’m kind of a fan of lemon rice, myself. It often goes great with a side order of rasam, too.) The rice dishes all consist of rice, with a bunch of seasonings and a sauce or two. It’s hard to go wrong with these things. Even in cases where they’re mediocrely done, they’re still good. It’s kind of like what people say about chocolate–even when you get bad chocolate, it’s still pretty good.
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IMHE, Indian restaurants do not smell anything like sweaty marathon runners’ armpits. They have a lovely, enticing aroma of savory spices. So do many Indian grocery stores.
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If you get really interested in Indian cuisines, I strongly recommend you check out Neelam Batra’s 1000 Indian Recipes. The book teaches you how to make just about every dish you’d find in a restaurant, and lots of dishes you might find in someone’s home. It’ll also teach you how to make lots of things you’d probably never get in a restaurant or in anyone’s house (there’s an entire section on New Delhi street vendor food, for example), and how to make Indian pickles and basic spice mixes. She covers every cuisine in every region. She’s also got suggestions for adapting traditional recipes to seasonally available produce in the United States. I love, love, love this book.
Chicken Palak. Paneer Palak is good too, if you want to go vegetarian (homemade cheese in a creamed spinach sauce).
I have many favorite Indian dishes, most of which have already been mentioned. One that hasn’t is Malai Kofta. It’s like little “meatballs” made only with vegetables, then they are cooked in the most wonderful cream sauce, topped with raisins and cashews. This dish is a great introduction to Indian food, very flavorful, nothing strange, not too spicy.
As others have said, I would recommend hitting the buffet first (but only if it is recommended and known to be good.) That way you can try a variety of dishes and figure out what flavors you like. Then try ordering off the menu with those flavors in mind.
Also, be sure to get the raita. It’s a cucumber yogurt sauce that will cool down your mouth if you get something too hot. Also, the dessert puddings are light and delicious. Be sure to save some room.
I should have said in my previous post that the majority of my experience is as you describe. I suppose I was over-emphasizing the fact that I have had heavenly food at certain establishments that my nose initially told me to go nowhere near…
And, BTW, how could I forget to insist that one wash down their meal with a good mango lassi?
Ooh, yeah. Mango lassi.
I’m a fan of salty lassi with the meal. Oh, and don’t forget to try some rassmalai for dessert. And stop into your local Indian grocer for some burfi. (But get some recommendations on the burfi first. Good burfi is this heavenly fudge-like stuff made with finely-ground nuts. Bad burfi is kind of dried out and unimpressive.)
And, of course, Indian spiced tea and coffee are great, too.
I love most Indian food - can’t eat the really spicy stuff though (no Vindaloo for me! ;)). I’d suggest a buffet-style meal for introduction so that you an get a little taste of many different dishes. I mostly prefer the northern Indian/Punjabi fare although I must confess that one of my favorites is the Masala Dosa (mentioned previously by Scribble). BTW, the batter for the pancake is lentil-based! I’ve heard too that it’s a dish that most Indians have for -breakfast- grins but let me assure you it’s delicious for lunch or dinner. And yes, it’s vegetarian.
I’ve also tried some of both the canned and frozen dishes (at least the ones available at my local grocery stores) and the quality of the food is pretty good - I’ve especially liked the paleek paneer and saag paneer. 
Now I am totally hungry for a Dosa!
Oh, man–me too! And I got done with a really good Korean meal not too long ago, either!
Hmm…well, it’s about 3 am now, so that means…hey, only 7 hours or so until the dosa place opens again!