photo:Shannon DeCelle

The Other India
By B.A. Nilsson

Karavalli

9B Johnson Road (Route 9R), Latham, 785-7600. Serving lunch Mon-Fri 11:30-2:30, dinner Sun-Thu 5-10, Fri-Sat 5-11, brunch Sat-Sun noon-2. AE, MC, V.

Cuisine: Indian assortment

Entrée price range: $10 (dal makhanni) to $24 (tandoor grilled rack of lamb)

Ambiance: pleasantly disguised strip-mall room

I try to keep an eye on what the other area food writers write about, especially if I’m worried about getting scooped on a new restaurant. And, dammit, Bill Dowd got to Karavalli first and wrote about it in the Aug. 7 issue of the Times Union. Not only that: He lavished upon it a rare encomium.

Determined to disagree, I visited recently with my hypercritical family of Indian cuisine fanatics. After besting the challenge of finding the place—it’s in a strip mall on the lower end of Route 9R, not far from the intersection with Route 9—we parked amid a sea of SUVs (it’s Latham, after all).

But something changed as we approached the restaurant. The doorway is outlined by an exotic wood carving, and the door itself was held open for us by the hostess as we entered. They want to be a little different; they want to be hospitable.

Let me get this out of the way first. Bill was right. This is the best Indian restaurant in the Capital Region. And not just because of the unusual variety of food the menu offers, but also by the superior preparation and presentation of even the most familiar dishes.

Open but seven months, Karavalli is still in the honeymoon phase, which, for an Indian restaurant, means they start you off with a complimentary basket of peppery papadum, a crisp lentil wafer that serves as an excellent delivery vehicle for the chutneys (onion and mint) served with it.

The friendly service, the spicy starter—they’re great distractions from the unalterable fact that you’re dining in a box, albeit a box that’s been tastefully painted (in contrasting shades of blue) and hung with appealing Indian artwork and tapestries.

As you study the menu, as you inhale that robust mix of dry-roasted cumin and cloves that wafts from the kitchen, you’ll see plates emerge over the ends of which an oversized, rolled pancake extends. That’s dosai, a signature dish at Karavalli. It’s from southern India (where you’ll also find the coastal Karavalli region), and marks a departure from the northern-Indian-intensive cuisine typical of most other such area restaurants.

Dosai is an enormous, whisper-light lentil-and-rice confection that has a more subtle flavor than papadum and therefore accommodates a wider range of accompaniments. An aromatic potato mixture characterizes the masala dosai ($7), which is also served with a side of dal and some dipping sauces.

Another appetizer approach is the sampler plate ($10), which gives you a taste of chicken tikka (otherwise available only as a $14 entrée), fresh from the tandoor oven, along with tasty morsels of ground lamb kebab, grilled chicken wings, a deep-fried, veggie-stuffed somosa patty and some crisp vegetable fritters. And an order of nan, the unleavened, tandoor-cooked bread.

But be careful. That sampler and a dosai are a meal for two, and you don’t want to miss a shot at the various entrées. Owner Sunil Kayalchirayil, who also co-owns a restaurant in Lee, Mass., explains that he and many of his associates in the restaurant are from southern India, and they reasoned that it was about time that area had more than merely Punjabi food.

Thus the chemmeen pappas ($17), from the southeastern Kerala area, in which shrimp are tossed with coconut, chilis and coriander, and avial malabar ($12), a vegetarian dish with bananas, tams, beans and more in a coconut-yogurt sauce.

My wife practically pounced on the exotic-sounding lasoni gobi ($12), a unique concoction of deep-fried, garlicky cauliflower florets served with a sweet and sour sauce. My daughter, meanwhile, as she approaches the age of 9, paid me the highest compliment: “You pick something for me.”

I came up with a winner. Coconut chicken ($14, also from Kerala) features a tricky blend of spices dominated by chili peppers and mustard sweetened to a delicious finish by coconut milk, reminiscent of a Thai curry.

While I don’t (honest!) pursue spiciness for its own sake, a sauce called phal, noted on the menu as even spicier than a vindaloo, called to me. With chicken it’s $14, $17 with shrimp, and the lamb-enriched version I ordered was $15. While it’s not a mouth-searing killer, it was decidedly hotter than I’m used to finding in the area, and not just offering heat for its own sake. Flavors mixed excitingly with the fire.

Plenty of familiar items are available, including tandoori fare and rice-based biryani dishes, and there’s a sizeable list of vegetarian entrées.

There’s also the usual lunch alterative of a buffet, which when I visited included an array of more than a dozen dishes that included preparations of chicken and lamb (the latter in a sweet coconut sauce) as well as a vegetable curry and deep-fried lentil donuts. And a basket of hot nan is served at your table.

So here, at last, is the place that breaks what’s become a too-familiar pattern in the presentation of Indian cuisine, and I’m betting that it ups the ante for all concerned.

Click here for a list of recently reviewed restaurants.

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