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“Kalustyan's Cafe”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	Indian	Flatiron	Moderate	Great

ven (all you Atkins folks, just try to resist these pillowy breads), dip the bread in the sauce too. Dip your fingers in the sauce. Dip your date’s fingers in the sauce. Get some strangers in there too. Get the idea?

After you’re done dipping, order the allepo glazed tuna carpaccio ($9)—a wide thin slip of ruby red tuna topped with the coolest sort of Indian succotash made of firm soy beans, lime juice, fried crumbled silverfish (slightly salty little fishies), and tossed in a feisty sambal puree made of red chiles, shrimp paste, dried shrimp, candied citrus zest, and lime juice. It’s bold and beautiful.

Next, go for a plate of the juiciest chicken tikka ($8/16) ever, marinated in lemon, rosemary and thyme with harissa and a shaved Asian pear and arugula salad, and the TelliCherry tandori shrimp ($10/19) with a killer marinated cucumber salad. The fat, head-on shrimp are moist inside, with a peppery char, and the cucumber salad is possibly the most amazing thing I have ever seen done to cucumbers next to Gus’s pickles. The crunchy half mooned cucumbers are tossed in a delicious vinaigrette derived from Mohan’s mother’s pickle recipe made from pineapple juice, green mangos, green papaya, lemongrass, red and green chiles, tumeric, black mustard seeds and ginger. Acid, heat, sweet, it’s all in there. You can’t even imagine this dressing—you must go and have it for yourselves. Ask nicely and maybe he’ll start selling it at Kalustyan’s and you can take it home and drink it from the container.

Moving onto the entrée arena, I loved the grilled sambal brushed skate wing with cucumber raita and lemon sumac oil ($16)—a sort of barbecued take on this, the corduroy of fish—its flesh so moist and tender, it pulls apart into skinny supple strips, and lands in your mouth with a great amount of chile-driven heat, cooled off by the cucumber raita. Perfect balance. For vegetarians, the forbidden black rice dish, tossed with a vegetable congee made from green tomatoes, zucchini and chiles—is so amp’d up with flavor that you have expect it to get up and sing.

My favorite dish of Mohan’s is his vindaloo. When he was at Spice Market, he made it with pork, but here, where pork is verboten, he makes it with lovely melting chunks of braised veal, in a thick sweet-tart vindaloo puddle that puckers your cheeks and leaves you unable to stop ... [more, click below]

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Posted: August 1, 2004

Other restaurants in Flatiron :
+ Suenos   + Amuse-- Closed   + Dos Caminos   + Lucy-- Closed   + Gramercy Taver   + Veritas   + Fleur De Sel   + Bolo -- CLosed   + City Bakery   + Shake Shack   + Kalustyan's Cafe   + Devi   + BLT Fish   + Sugarcane   + BLT Prime   + Barca 18-- CLOSED   + Beppe   + Barbounia   + Boqueria   + Eleven Madison   + Lonesome Dove-- CLOSED   + Hill Country   + Olana   + Wildwood   + Primehouse   + Allegretti   + Bar Breton   + Aldea   + SD26 by Bao Ong   + ABC Kitchen   + Ciano   + The NoMad   

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