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Kohinoor Indian Cuisine76 W Powell Rd
There are four things that I think are essential to having a good restaurant. First, you need a variety of good and well-prepared menu selections. I have been to a restaurant that had only 3 selections with a few variations of each. Their menu was essentially unchanged for over 75 years and they packed the place every day except Christmas. Our family went often, my father and mother used to go there on dates and even when we moved we would drive the 600 miles to visit family but another motivation was getting a big order from Bill's BBQ. The reason this place was open was because they did one thing in three different packages very well. You have to be clean and accessible with a drop of ambience. There must be some value in what you serve. Why would you go if it was a meal you could do at home and the value does not have to be the food. It could be the setting, the entertainment, or even tradition. There is a group of friends from High School and we owned and operated an “Illegal” fraternity. It was called The Barn. We will periodically have a reunion and we are more than likely to make a stop at a place called “DiArini’s Pizza and have a “Dia-Submarini sandwich and a pitcher of beer. It is all about tradition. Finally, you need good service. Of the qualities listed above Kohinoor hit three of the four. Let’s talk about it. Kohinoor is a new restaurant located in a building that has been hard to find and is a restaurant graveyard. Previously it was the Spain Restaurant which I reviewed. Kohinoor is an Indian Restaurant and they have made minimal changes inside. It is a light, open and comfortable place. It is clean with little clutter. It smelled great when we walked in with a light curry smell spiced with savory meat and spices. It made us all hungry the instant we walked in. We were seated immediately and we ordered the Vegetable Sampler Platter and the Tamarind Eggplant as appetizers. Both were very good and the sampler platter was huge. The sampler platter was made up of Vegetable Samosa (a pastry stuffed with spiced potato and green peas), Bhajia (vegetable fritters), Vada (sliced green chilies, curry leaves and onion deep fried in a rice batter), and Bhel Poori (rice puffs with onions, potato, cilantro, chickpeas and tamarind). The Tamarind Eggplant was paper thin fresh eggplant quick fried and served with a tamarind sauce. I loved it but I have never found a way of serving eggplant that I did not like. My tablemates rated it from great to “There is nothing you can do to get a piece of eggplant in my mouth”. I think it was very good. For a main meal we tried the Shesh Kabob, Tandoori Mixed Grill, Tandoori Chicken and Bagara Baigan. Everything is probably known except for the Bagar Baigana (baby eggplant cooked in a curry of coconut, sesame seeds and roasted peanuts. Everyone liked what they ordered as an overall selection. I had the Mixed Grill and each selection was very good except the grilled lamb. That was a bit dry and stringy. Other than that this was a good and a fun meal. We are left with the service. I am hesitant to comment too harshly on the service as other people have simply raved about the service and how personable the servers were. I am going to assume that we were not there on our server’s best night. It may have been his first as he seemed befuddled by the ordering, serving and follow through I have come to expect from a good server. By the end of the meal it had become a source of jokes at the table. I would go back any day and I found the menu to be variable with a large number of selections. I also appreciated the diverse vegetarian and vegan selections. I have the feeling that the service issue was one of training and probably inexperience. I hope you try Kohinoor Indian Cuisine; I will.
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