On Valentine’s Day I had neglected to call ahead and get reservations at any of the top restaurants in town. On the morning of the day every $100-a-pair-of-plates venue in town was booked. I’d have to look for something less impressive, but still very nice.  And I felt like Indian food. 

The main difference between Maharajah and the swankier places, in my estimation, is the location. It’s been said that for restaurants location is critical, and this one is not prominently placed. Behind the Tuesday Morning store and facing Starplex Hulen Stabium 10 movie theater on Hulen Blvd, there is no border between the monolithically square, orange building in which Maharajah is housed and a vast parking lot holding hundreds of cars that stretches out in front of it. 

It’s not an exterior that breeds confidence. A neon sign advertising a lunch buffet completes the picture. But then you go through the door. 

There is a foyer, the first notice you get that Maharajah is more than a quick bite of cheap ethnic food. Looking in, you will see white and red cloths on the tables, and framed pictures of heros and gods, dressed in traditional Indian garb.  The smell of Indian herbs and spices wafts over you. Sitting down, you receive a menu with a good number of choices, featuring the products of the tandoori oven.

Chicken tandoori is marinated in yougurt and baked in the famous tandoor oven.

Naan bread and tandoori chicken are my main interests here, though the house certainly serves curries and vindaloo dishes, not to mention samosas and other delicious appetizers I can’t name, since the Tandoori Platter does not come with labels.  But it’s the naan bread that I dream of when I think about Indian. These flat, soft sheets flavored with garlic, herbs or just plain are served a la carte so you can get as many as you want.

We also ordered dinner, Tandoori chicken and Tandoori Mixed grill, both delicious and both very reasonalbly priced and served sizzling right out of the tandoori oven.

Some day I’d like to see what the commerical tandoori oven looks like, I’ve always imagined it to be a clay lined hole in the ground, fired with rough-cut logs, but that can’t be true. There are too many Indian restaurants in America that use it for it to be so impractically constructed. No, the tandoori oven must be something you get from the commercial food supply stores. I look it up on the web and discover one such oven that looks a bit like R2-D2. Another looks like a dishwasher. But oh, the taste of the food that it produces.

We left satisfied that we had had a tasty dinner in a fairly quiet environment (there were a couple of  mostly well-behaved children there when we visited). I will admit that the tables are quite close together, and that we overhead some really unusual comments from other dinners on Valentine’s day. But we had a nice evening, even though I had forgotten to reserve a fancier place.  A nice Valentine’s evening and some naan bread was my goal and that was what I got, so I can heartily recommend it.