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Punjabi Tandoor
Miramar Area/Black Mountain Road Area
December 2006
Alright people, you are finally getting the damn idea. Eat this food immediately. Go here now and do not stop at the parked 18 wheelers doing speed along the side road or the weird sex-prostitute cars along the dark streets.
This is it I guess, for San Diego, and it’s pretty damn good, and finally has real prices.
We ordered a feast: Chicken Vindaloo, Tandoori mix grill, chicken tikka masala, Vegetable Samosa, 2 naan, mix pickles, and raita.
This place is family run, there’s an elderly dad, the mom, and some young hiphop Punjabi kid who I can’t tell if he’s being surly, lazy, or just dumb, but he had problems taking my order on the phone & giving me my food at the counter.
The only bad thing about this place is its physicality, though some might think it’s a cool “hole-in-the-wall” type vibe. It’s true. Plus they don’t have beer, which I find essential to vindaloo, but that’s why you get it to go, but it’s a bit cold when you eat it, and for some reason Indian beer goes best with Indian food (especially Taj Mahal (large size)) and you can’t find Indian beer to go anywhere.
The place has only like 4 plastic tables inside, most of them taken. One table was filled with college students (I went at night), an Indian couple leaving, one table had a 30-40ish couple and I overheard their conversation because I had to wait for the food:
He was Indian and she was Korean-American, heavy on the American:
She: So what language do you speak? Sikh?
He: Sikh is a religion, not a language, the language is Punjabi.
She: Oh, this food is good, you must have strong digestive system because you eat a lot of this yogurt
He: Umm (eating)
She: So do you prefer to eat with your hands or with utensils
He: Depends
There was also some Tom Cruise looking Top Gun military dude waiting by the register for his food (the restaurant is near Miramar). Behind him on the wall were the other offerings that you could buy there including Top Ramen, gum, and some snacks.
I finally got my food and left, leaving the professors to mull over ethnic issues while I went and gorged my fat face.
Now these types of places are rare, the ones where the food looks a little funky but tastes 100% handmade and 100% delicious, the kind of street-type food that really gives you what you want, no holding back on spices, sweat, and tears. I ate at one once in Kuwait that me and my friends found, I think it was called Miami restaurant, it was packed with Indian and Pakistani construction workers and you just got what they gave you, some curry on top of rice, but it was the best damn Indio-Pak-Bangladeshi food I ever had.
Speaking of which, I have no idea, and apparently neither does anyone, about the nuances surrounding Indian food, Punjabi, Hindi (though I assume Hindi is veggie), Pakistani (assume is halal), Bangladeshi, whatever. When you go to an Indian restaurant in the USA, you get some generic version of all of this, but I suspect that there are so many details regarding it that I sound like an idiot when I talk about the food.
Who the hell cares though, if the damn food is good, then you just eat it and be done with it.
Punjab is like that Miami restaurant experience, however, and will deliver you the goods, for now. I say for now because I am concerned that this place will get spoiled, that dad and the wife will hire some non-Punjabi hands to run the joint and cook the tandoori and they won’t get it right in the same way. But for now here it is, so go there.
Their vindaloo was well-spiced, if not a little creamy, and had that certain perfect blend of things. It was hot and I didn’t have to ask them to make it spicy, vindaloo means spicy chump, means it. This vindaloo was spicy, but it was good spicy, that multi-layered spicy that meant more than sprinkling chili powder on top, the kind that meant it was a complex interplay of textures and spices with undertones of non-spices and overtones of hot Indian food, that kind buddy.
The chicken tikka masala was also fantastic. The wife and I suspect butter to play a heavy role in the making of the food, which was fine as it made everything delicious. The chicken was cooked in the sauce, you could tell, instead of just being chucked in afterwards.
The tandoori mix grill was my favorite, though some of the chicken skewers were a little dry. I’m not even sure what I ate but it was amazing, and spicy, some of the shaped kebabs, the type where you form a ball around the skewer, were hot (spicy) as anything and tasted like the chef’s hands (this can be a good or bad thing, here it is a great thing, that extra special something that you need…you need!).
The raita soothes the soul, and it is scooped out of a big vat of it by hand, as is the amazing and free with order basmati rice.
The naan was well blackened, perfectly done, and held the chicken as it should.
The samosas were a nice spicy mix of potato and pea and were enclosed in a thin, freshly made, flaky crust which added that extra something special. The mint sauce was nice too, spicy and minty and slightly tangy, something I put on my naan after I ate the samosa.
The pickles were a little underdone, but homemade, and very lemony. The guy got the pickles (achaar) out of a Tupperware container and dumped it into a to-go Styrofoam thingy, so you know they are homemade (very rare). But the pickles needed more marinating to get softer, some of the rind was still inedible and it was a little too citric, should be more salty and hot-spicy.
The price was a welcome respite from USA Indian restaurant prices, which seem to think it’s ok to charge $15 just because it has an ethnic sounding name. All of the dishes here are around $5, the tandoori grill was a little bit more, and you get a ton of food, the same amount as any other Indian restaurant I’ve been to.
The bad: give me a lemon with juice in it please, make the chicken tandoori less dry (ie make it fresher), and that’s all thank you.
Hands down this is the best Indian food I’ve had in San Diego.
Go to Punjabi Tandoor now:
9235 Activity Road, Suite 111
San Diego, CA 92126
Tel: (858) 695-0956
Fax: (858) 695-0962
http://www.punjabitandoor.com/
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