Columbus Monthly / December 2011 / Indian Oven

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Indian Oven

A new review of an old favorite.

Long one of the city’s better Indian restaurants, Indian Oven took a big risk in moving from a small place north of campus a few years ago to open in a big new building on Main Street downtown.

While the recession has taken a toll on just about every restaurant, this establishment has enough faithful followers, and others seeking good Indian food, to keep it rolling along. Indian cuisine is by and large strongly flavored, but the best is the kind where the myriad spices and other fragrant ingredients—chilies, pickles, herbs, onions, garlic, ginger etc.—highlight rather than obscure the vegetables, meats and seafood.

This requires not just high-quality, fresh ingredients, but a deft hand in the kitchen. It’s no mean feat to turn out powerfully flavored food with all the components being both discernable and enjoyable. But it’s the one thing that distinguishes Indian Oven from its counterparts in town—as well as the unusual setting for a restaurant of this sort: modern, with glass, stainless steel, painted concrete floors and bright white linen. And, thankfully, it’s devoid of the kitsch that adorns so many Indian places.

Food-wise, there’s no kitsch, either, just straightforward, well-executed dishes from all over the vast country, with an emphasis on Bengali. One of my favorite dishes was Bengali salmon (a filet baked and covered with a mixed vegetable curry). The fish was fresh, the vegetables (potato, broccoli, okra, onion, carrot and squash) were firm and tasty and the sauce, especially if you get medium or hot, had tons of flavor.

Listed among the house specialties was beef kori, with dark, powerful spices mixed with butter, onions, peppers and roasted tomatoes. Try this one hot for the full effect.

I also liked shahi paneer: cubes of plain, housemade farmer-type cheese, which took on a bright life with the creamy sauce of nuts, roasted onions and tomatoes. If you want fire, the vinegar-based sauce called vindaloo will blaze in your mouth and belly. (Vindaloo is good with chicken or beef, but best with lamb.) Dal usually means a stew of pulses—lentils, beans, peas—and the version here, dal makhani, had three different beans in a slightly creamy tomato curry base. It was delicious.

Appetizers were standard, but well-made. They included samosa—a pastry filled with potatoes and peas served with a green cilantro chutney—and the fried bean and minced vegetable patties called pakora. More interesting (but filling, so be careful) was the tube-shaped alu chop—a mixture of crushed and vigorously seasoned potatoes and onions coated in bread crumbs and fried. It was served with a sweet-hot sauce redolent of tamarind. (It should be noted that a buffet is served for lunch.)

Another top-notch trait of Indian Oven is the service: attentive and friendly, yet unobtrusive. Many of the servers have been with the place a good long while.

 

Indian Oven

427 E. Main St.

220-9390

indianoven.com

Price range: Lunch, appetizers, soups, salads $4.95-$9.95; breads $2.50-$5.95; entrees $8.95-$10.25; dinner entrees $8.95-$22.95.

Hours: Lunch Monday through Friday 11:30 am to 2 pm; dinner Monday through Thursday 5 to 10 pm, Friday till 10:30 pm and Saturday 1 to 10:30 pm; closed Sunday.

Rating: *** 1⁄2