Mughal Garden, 920 N. Charles St., (410) 547-0001. Open every day for lunch and dinner, Sunday brunch. Major credit cards. smoking area: yes. Appetizers: $1.75-$5.95; entrees, $7.50- $14.95. *** Baltimore is lucky to have any number of good Indian restaurants: Akbar, Bombay Grill, Banjara come immediately to mind. It makes you wonder if there's room for one more.
Apparently the owners of the new Mughal Garden, which opened where the Harvey House used to be, have no such doubts. The space has been renovated lavishly, with mahogany paneling, etched-glass ceiling lamps, a bubbling fountain (with a faux lily pond, no less), tables with deep-blue cloths spaced comfortably apart, Indian art. The room would look more elegant if they would put away the covered-dish buffet table when it's not in use, but this is still a pleasant place to be.
Clearly the Mughal Garden is going for the upper end of the Indian restaurant clientele -- does another Indian restaurant in the city have a bottle of Dom Perignon (for $100) on its wine list? Of course, you might as well be drinking strawberry wine coolers with food this spicy, but think of its inclusion as symbolic.
What its inclusion is not symbolic of is the prices of the food, which are surprisingly low. For instance, lobster tails "delicately spiced in a mild sauce" are $14.95.
Speaking of bargains, the all-you-can-eat buffet is worth knowing about if the food is as good at lunch time as it is at night. (And I have no reason to think it wouldn't be.) The buffet consists of three meat and three vegetarian entrees with appetizers, rice, breads and desserts for $6.50. On Sunday there's an all-you-can-eat brunch with a "free" alcoholic drink for $7.95.
At dinner time the choices are extensive. You could take the easy way out and get the Mughal Garden Special, a complete dinner for $12.95. But we decided to put ourselves in the hands of our waitress and asked her to order for us what the kitchen does best.
It turned out she wasn't very knowledgeable about the cuisine, and one of my guests who had lived in India for four years seemed to know more about it than she did. But even though her suggestions were a bit conventional, we liked every one of them. (The service, by the way, is excellent. I loved it when she came up to our table at the end of the meal and said, "How have my dear customers been doing while I've been gone?")
On her recommendation we started with the two soups. The table was evenly divided between which was better; but my vote is the one that counts, and I recommend the mulligatawny. Mughal Garden's version of the traditional lentil soup was creamy liquid silk with an edge of fire. Murgh shorba, a spicy chicken soup, had its own charms -- a complex layering of flavors -- but it would be my second choice.
Mughal Garden's samosas, fried pastries filled with potatoes and peas or minced lamb, are surprisingly grease-free; they come with coriander chutney and tamarind sauce. An assorted grilled appetizer included one large tandoori shrimp, along with several meatballs made of nicely seasoned ground lamb and some tender bites of chicken, all cooked in the tandoori oven.
Tandoori lamb made its appearance again as a main course. The lean cubes of meat had been marinated in yogurt and spices, then charcoal-grilled -- but not to the point where they were dry.
I wanted to pair the lamb with an okra dish combining tomatoes, onions and spices; but no one else was interested. (I'll be back.) Instead we settled on bengun bhartha, a smoky, flavorful mush -- there's no other word for it -- of eggplant, tomatoes and onions. Mughal Garden has an extensive list of vegetarian dishes, including an excellent dal (mughalai dal) made with dark lentils and spices.
Chicken masala married fork-tender cubes of white meat with an intensely flavorful but not too fiery sauce, a seductively good tomato-tinged cream. As for seafood, our waitress suggested the shrimp saag, a combination of shrimp and spinach perfumed with a variety of spices.
We, of course, ordered too much food for four. Dinner included perfectly cooked basmati rice and four kinds of bread: the puffy, football-shaped puri; crisp, spicy pappadums; chapati, an unleavened whole-wheat bread; and onion kulcha, bread stuffed with onions and cooked in the tandoori oven.
Still, there's always room for dessert, right? Not for me; the best I could do was a cup of spiced Indian tea. But one of my guests polished off -- while I watched in amazement -- sweetened homemade cheese balls (something like cream cheese, only drier) floating in cream sweetened and flavored with pistachios. Another ordered gulab jamun, fat little balls made from dried milk and honey. They swam in a hot, sweet syrup. (The operative word here is sweet.) Most appealing to me was a rice pudding with golden raisins and pistachios, less sweet than the other two. If none of these appeals, your best bet is the mango or pistachio ice cream.
Next: New Year's Day reflections