Place: Chithra's International & Indian Cuisine.
Address: 48 E. Flagler St., Miami (at First Avenue, in the second-level food court).Contact: 305-789-2842.Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday, until 4 p.m. Saturday.Prices: Appetizers $2.75-$5.49, entrees $5.99-$8.99, desserts $2.49-$3.50.Life has come full circle for Raja Kandaswamy. The owner of Raja's Indian in downtown Miami came to South Florida 17 years ago as a cook on a cruise ship. Today he feeds South Asian cruise-line workers craving food from home at his flagship restaurant and the brand-new Chithra's International & Indian Cuisine.
Named for his wife, Chithrakala, and tucked into the food court on the second level of Flagler Station Mall, Chithra's offers mainly North Indian dishes. (Rafael Yungan, an Ecuadorean cook, also turns out pizza, garlic knots and calzone.)
The new place has rosy granite countertops, colorful tile walls and floral garlands. Pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses add to the good karma. The Moghali-inspired menu is served steam-table-style.
North Indian food is richer and creamier than South Indian and uses cream, butter, and ground almond and cashew pastes for flavor and texture. Chithra's features lots of dishes with fresh curd cheese (paneer), hearty stewed lentils (dal), breads cooked in a furnace-like tandoor oven, rice biryani made by layering fragrant basmati and meat with spices, and salty or sweet lassi (yogurt drinks frothed in a blender).
Start with baked puffs, made by folding puff pastry dough around ground lamb, chicken curry or vegetable curry to form flaky golden triangles. Or get the onion and paneer pakora (fritters), battered in chickpea flour and deep-fried, good with complimentary tart tamarind chutney and lime pickle.
Daily specials include rice with a choice of meat and one vegetable or, for vegetarians, rice and three vegetables. Gobi chili masala is a dry curry with florets of cauliflower in a ground spice, green chile and garlic mixture -- or get it with ginger instead of the chile. Palak paneer is mildly spiced ground spinach with fresh cubes of cheese. Chana masala is a popular Punjabi dish of chickpeas and potato cooked in a thick spicy tomato sauce.
Meat eaters can dig into lamb shahi kurma, a royal-style braise in a ground nut and green chile paste, or lamb vindaloo (marinated in vinegar and cooked in hot red gravy). There's also tandoori chicken, chicken pepper fry (breast meat fried in peppery tomato sauce), fried kingfish steaks, lamb or chicken biryani and vegetable pulao.
For a simple lunch, get chole puri, a puffy, deep-fried bread with stewed chickpeas, a fresh mango lassi and, for dessert, kheer (rice pudding) or rava halwa (semolina pudding with cardamom, nuts and melted butter). Or quell the spices with pistachio kulfi (ice cream) or a strawberry shake made with milk and ice cream. Chithra is a welcome newcomer to the weekday lunch scene.
Linda Bladholm's latest book is Latin and Caribbean Grocery Stores Demystified.
