Dining out: Ganesh Indian Cuisine
Take Indian restaurants. I've had some superb Indian food in this valley — particularly at Sandy's Royal India — but I've also had some that was not so good. And I like Indian food, which makes the disappointment all the more keen when it's not up to snuff.
So when Ganesh Indian Cuisine opened just a few blocks from my home in Midvale, I put off visiting.
Too bad, too, because when we made it to Ganesh for a recent family dinner, I regretted my hesitation. I give Royal India the edge in ambience and service, but the food we had at Ganesh is among the best I've eaten.
We started our meal with the vegetable samosas and chicken pakora, making the mistake we always make: not ordering enough. It took our family of six about two minutes to scarf down the moist and savory samosas stuffed with potatoes and peas and the tiny bites of tender chicken coated in nutty chickpea batter. The appetizers came with a mild, sweet tamarind sauce and a bright-green mint sauce with a surprising spicy finish.
We also had Ganesh's equivalent of chips and salsa, a big basket of papadum, super-thin plate-size Indian crackers studded with caraway seeds.
The vegetable curry featured creamed spinach and tender chickpeas in a complex curry. The raita was cool and studded with cucumber, the naan tender and fresh, and the dessert, a bowl of sweetened vermicelli with nuts and sultanas, both surprising and strangely familiar in its comforting flavors.
The main dishes were the stars of our meal. We got two coconut kormas, a mild but still highly spiced version with lots of sweet shrimp, and a medium-spicy lamb korma whose flavors were so well-balanced that even my spiciness-averse husband enjoyed it.
At our server's suggestion we got the classic, chicken tikka masala, which had a sauce so heavenly that it's difficult to do it justice in writing: mildly sweet but with tons of depth, with new flavors swimming to the surface with every bite. That's the dish on which we ran out of naan, so intent were we on sopping up every bit of sauce. And that reminds me: We could have used a few more than the three naan served to our party of six.
The last dish, malai kofta, was my attempt to branch out. In a dark-pink, mild and creamy cashew sauce were an aromatic mixture of homemade Indian cheese and vegetables rolled into firm, fine-textured balls. Everyone in our family liked it.
Recent comments
Good to see you tried this place. I think they do some of the best…
gastronomicslc.com | Oct. 7, 2008 at 12:48 p.m.
Thanks for the review. Can't wait to try it!
Indian food lover | Oct. 3, 2008 at 6:55 p.m.
