Well, there’s not a tremendous amount of the latter, but it has what it needs for a place that’s bargain-priced and fits the strip-mall location well. The menu features nothing more than what’s been established decades ago as the American standard for Indian-Pakistani fare, a collection of Punjabi favorites that place curries and other sauce-rich items alongside tandoor oven-roasted meats and bread.

At home, I’ve been preparing a lot of dinners with free-range or otherwise politically correct meatstuffs, grilling or roasting them in such a way as to bring out the most natural flavor. But on the road, I’m a sucker for an Indian meal, where entrées are as much about the herbs and spices as the meat or vegetables buried within. Which is no disparagement. The most appealing Indian cookery creates a balance of flavor that’s also kinetic, dishes seasoned to allow a range of complementary sensations to play across the palate. The snap of cloves or cinnamon gives way to the earthier flavors of turmeric and cumin, with garlic and cardamom rising in a great sensory swell behind. It’s geared, when done right, to the particular item being enhanced. Meaning a vegetable curry should have a different bouquet than one built around lamb chunks. Nothing escapes some manner of this treatment. Even the tandoori shrimp ($14) or chicken ($11) gets a coating of a yogurt-based sauce before hitting the hot clay oven.

My family and I visited early on a recent Friday evening, were warmly greeted and efficiently served. There’s nothing fancy about the tables and decor, although a large mural will inspire some study.

Appetizers are attractively priced, with potato-and-pea-filled samosa for $3, pakora ditto and pappadum (lentil-flour wafers) for $2.75 and a combo of all three for $5. A cold mix of chick peas, potatoes and crushed but crunchy samosa in a yogurt sauce is $5, and it’s an unusually spicy dish for what’s otherwise tempered into Food for Nervous Americans. As such, it was especially delicious.

This deflected me from my usual pursuit of a vindaloo dish, a preparation that came to India’s Goa region by way of Portugal, and which celebrates a high threshold of heat. Instead, I chose beef biryani ($12), a rice-based preparation of Persian origin in which the rice is cooked separately from its curried accompaniment. An old test for the effectiveness of the preparation is to drop a clump of it on the floor. It’s correct if none of the rice sticks together.

I wasn’t prepared to do this test in the restaurant, but I was pleased with the vibrancy of the dish’s flavor. This is a quality that set our Shalimar meal apart from many other Indian dinners: There was a sense of immediacy, of brightness about the seasonings.

A long list of chicken dishes includes chicken palak ($10), combining the poultry with spinach and saucing it with a combo of aromatic spices. It was mild enough to please my palate-wimpy wife, aggressive enough to fill out the taste place in all other respects. Other dishes in that list include chicken tikka masala (cream sauce, peppers and onions, $11), chicken curry ($10), chicken do piazza (with onions and tomatoes, $10) and chicken Karahi (onions, tomatoes and hot peppers, $10).

These preparations inform the lamb dishes as well, with similar prices. Look also for lamb Madras, a spicy dish ($10) and lamb bhuna ($10) in which the marinated meat is cooked with onions, ginger and garlic. Ginger figures strongly in the lamb rogan josh ($11), which we sampled. Large slivers of ginger decorated the top of the dish, which otherwise features a blend of curry spices and a thick sauce.

Several similar shrimp or salmon preparations are available, and there’s a long list of vegetable-based items. We added an order of regular naan ($1.75) for the wimpy palates, and naan stuffed with jalapenos and cheese ($3) for me.

Another way to enjoy the food is via the lunch buffet, which is served daily from 11:30 to 2 (noon to 3 on weekends).

Now, let’s straighten out who belongs to which of the various Shalimars in the area. Qasim Bhatti opened Albany’s Shalimar in 1991, kicking it all off, and soon thereafter opened the Shalimar in Troy. Bhatti sold both businesses in 2004. Troy remains independently owned; Albany went to Leo Ashiq, a family member. Ashiq opened the Shalimars in Clifton Park and Delmar. But he sold his interest in Albany back to Bhatti, who is continuing to run the restaurant under the name LaZeez. Bhatti also owns a just-opened Shalimar in Latham, which took over the space occupied by the Afghan Grill in Peter Harris Plaza.

Ashiq is also negotiating to open Shalimars in Schenectady and Guilderland, which would make for an impressive area spread of Shalimars alone, never mind the many other Indian restaurants now in business here. And that’s not a bad thing at all.