IF YOU GO
Place: Taste of Bombay.Address: 111 NE Third Ave., near the corner of First Street, Miami.Contact: 305-358-0144.Hours: 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Wednesday-Monday.Prices: Buffet $9.95, menu items $2.95-$18.95.FYI: Wine and beer; catering available.From the street, Taste of Bombay looks like another dingy hole-in-the wall in traffic-snarled downtown, but step inside and you'll find some of the best Indian food in Miami.
The large, bright space is done in the green, orange and white of the Indian flag. Along one wall, gauzy curtains flutter between elevated booths. And in the back, you see the pièce de résistance: a sari-draped buffet running the width of the room.
Gleaming copper Indian chafing dishes hold daily offerings such as chickpea flour-battered vegetable pakoras (fritters), tamarind and mint-coriander chutneys, onion relish, basmati rice, dal (stewed split lentils) and a changing roster of north and south Indian dishes. At $9.95 for all you can eat, the lunchtime feast is one of the best deals in town.
Owner Mohammed ''Mike'' Hussain came to Miami from the upscale Bandra suburb of Bombay 20 years ago, starting out as a street vendor of frozen yogurt. He had attended culinary school in Bombay, so when the city busted him for selling food without a license, he bought an Italian restaurant and added Indian food to the menu.
Hussain sold that place about a year and a half ago and bought his current restaurant. (He also runs Saffron in West Palm Beach.) His parents come from Kerala in South India, and chef Ramesh Shetty is from nearby Mangalore, so authentic dishes from those regions often appear at the buffet.
On a recent visit, the south was represented by cabbage poriyal (a spiced, shredded stir-fry) and chicken curry in a dark, deeply delicious, complexly seasoned tomato and coconut milk base. From the north came mattar paneer (fresh cheese cubes with peas in a creamy sauce), succulent tandoori chicken, gosht bhuna (lamb chunks fried with onions, peppers and spices) and, for dessert, sooji halwa, a thick pudding made from cream of wheat with sugar, cardamom and almonds.
Once you help yourself, drinks are brought to the table along with baskets of blistered, butter-brushed pieces of naan bread from the tandoor oven.
If you only order one thing from the menu, choose fish moli, a Kerala specialty made here with kingfish steaks swimming in a tomato and coconut milk sauce speckled with black mustard seeds. The fish masala (spice blend) is redolent of fennel, turmeric and chiles, finished with a splash of lemon, and the dish is so good you will want to lick the serving dish to get every last drop.
Linda Bladholm's latest book is Latin and Caribbean Grocery Stores Demystified.
