Monday, December 20, 2010. Taj Mahal Heats Up. A rare Monday trip into town. I have Ralph Brennan's forty autographed copies of Hungry Town to drop off. I considered having dinner there but the place looked pretty busy. I'm sure they are, what with the Celebration In The Oaks (formerly known as Christmas In The Oaks, but never mind) glowing in the dark of City Park across the street.
In search of dinner, I followed the Metairie Ridge to the road of the same name, shopping the restaurants on that ancient highway. The first one I passed suggested itself to me. I approved the suggestion so quickly that I almost took the turn into the parking lot on two wheels.
It's years since my last eat at the Taj Mahal. It's a laughable misnomer. The old, utilitarian space is decorated in an Indian style, but has no hint of grandeur. Tables are forced to fit a smallish space. My own spot was in a little nook that it shared at close range with another small table. There sat a couple whose conversation could not be tuned out, although I didn't catch whether they were on a first date, brother and sister, or co-workers. I am positive they are not married.
Right away I noticed significant differences with what I remember here. The dining room staff was more numerous and much sharper. The menu was full of new, more interesting dishes. A full page of Southern Indian food was new to me. It included such rarely-seen dishes as dosa, a kind of crepe filled with what amounts to Cream of Wheat and other things.
But when he brought me a Kingfisher beer, the waiter assured me that Anila Keswani is still the owner. She and her late husband Har opened Taj Mahal in 1982. It was the first permanent Indian restaurant in New Orleans, on Causeway Boulevard where the Little Tokyo is now. The Keswanis moved the restaurant Uptown (Keswany's), the French Quarter (Shalimar) and Uptown again (Nirvana). Only Nirvana remains of those. Somewhere along the way they recycled Taj Mahal into this Metairie Road spot.
My first dinner plan was to start with a seenk kebab. That's an herbal, sausage-shaped meatball roasted in the hot tandoor (the Indian answer, centuries ago, to the Big Green Egg). My entree would be lamb rogan josh, which I remember from a dinner here some seven years ago. But the waiter destroyed this order with the news that the kitchen was completely out of lamb.
My second attempt was radically different. Instead of the meaty lamb dishes I went vegetarian. A tomato soup with a fascinating array of seasonings came out so hot that I burned my tongue on it. One taste, and I couldn't hold back. Delicious.
The entree was paneer cheese with chilies. Paneer is made on the premises from cow's milk; it vaguely resembles fresh-milk mozzarella. They run cubes of it on a skewer and roast it until it gets a crispy-leathery exterior. The sauce was made with butter, tomatoes, bell peppers, and a lot of red pepper. The waiter warned me that this is a very spicy dish. I've had it before (although not here) and spicy is what I wanted. Indeed, it was right at the limits of my tolerance for pepper. Which is a place I love to go. Great eating. With some naan bread (below) from the tandoor and two platters of rice, I stuffed myself on this. I will eat this again at a time not too far in the future.
They even produced a new dessert. Indian restaurants the world over are weak on desserts, so this was remarkable. The waiter called it a carrot cake. It was more like a carrot custard. Or a sweet carrot pudding. Not bad.
The cold weather moderated a bit this night. The Marys and I were reasonably comfortable when we stepped outside at one in the morning to watch the moon slide into total eclipse. It was a good one, the disk of our big satellite going to maroon. We observed it for almost a full hour.
Taj Mahal. Old Metairie: 923-C Metairie Rd. 504-836-6859.
