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| - Where have we been to have taken so long to find The Blue Taj. It is cleverly hidden behind the movie theater in the Ballantyne Village shopping center that has the tower thing and Mellow Mushroom. At the junction of Ballantyne Commons and Hwy 521/Johnson Road.
We went for lunch and here was the conversation with my wife:
wife: This is wonderful me: munch, munch
wife: The naan is exceptional me: slurp, slurp
wife: These sauces are delicious and unusual me: gobble, gobble glump, glump
To say the least we were very impressed. This just ain't the chicken curry and tandori chicken joint so regularly found in town. Taj is classy, serves unusual sauces and combinations that we have not found around. It is pricier, but the unusual offerings make up for the price.
The lunch menu had one choose from appetizers, which included an excellent tomato soup flavored with coconut, and then you could go with an express lunch or regular lunch.
Express offered 5ive sauces, so pick one, then what meat or veggie you wanted with it. Included were rice (and a decent portion it was), naan (we got a basket with four wedges of it) and dessert. Other than the express one could choose delicious entres which also came with rice, naan and dessert.
Wife had leek kofta which was croquettes of potatoes and leek with cashew tomato sauce. Scrumpcious in all respects. I had the methiwaala korma consisting of chicken chunks in a creamed cashew and onion sauce with fenugreek. Ummmm...got you with fenugreek, eh?
Fenugreek is a mild form of tarragon.
The sauce was so flavorful that we never found our socks that got knocked off! It was so flavorful, dotted with little bits of leaves and seeds and spices that each mouthful (amplified with chunks of chicken with rice or naan or all of it together) had your tongue serving as a dance floor for on which the flavors danced. When we mentioned this wonderful sauce on checkout, two of the wait staff smiled and hardheadedly agreed that it was also their favorite sauce.
You might not be able to pronounce it, but the wait staff knows what you are asking about.
We concluded that this is the best Indian restaurant we have found to date in Charlotte. May the search continue, with many stops back into the Blue Taj.
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