| rev:text
| - When I talked to the owner of Tandoori Times at his Scottsdale restaurant some months ago, he mentioned that he was opening a second location on Bell Road in Glendale.
"But don't you think there's a lot of competition already from the all the other Indian restaurants in the area?" I asked.
"Competition? There is no competition."
Now, his response could be taken as being cocky, but given how this guy has turned his original restaurant into a success (complete with random sword-wielding belly dancer on Friday and Saturday nights) , I didn't really doubt him. And so when I got word the Tandoori Times "2" finally opened in Glendale, I was all over it and went there for lunch today.
Bringing some colleagues along with me, we headed out on Bell and found Tandoori Times in a shopping center parking lot with a temporary sign covering one for a now-vacated Kokopelli Grill. Walking inside, it was definitely smaller than the Scottsdale location but still bright and clean and done up well. Not really any booths inside, but tables could easily be rearranged for large groups.
Having only been to Tandoori Times (#1) for dinner, I was curious about what they did for lunch. We got our regular menus as well as one for lunch specials, which come with a naan, rice, salad, and daal (lentils). The lunch specials of the day were lamb vindaloo, chicken jalfrezi (boneless chicken in spicy curry) and navratan korma (a vegetable dish). I opted for the jalfrezi, one colleague got the korma and the other opted for veggie biryani (a rice dish). The service was prompt, courteous and efficient, and we got our food pretty quickly. I know the owner is a big stickler for good service so it was great to see nothing slid in the new location.
As for my lunch, I wasn't much of a fan of the salad, which was basically iceberg lettuce with ranch, and the daal was a little on the bland side, but the naan with the chicken was excellent. Really good flavor to the jalfrezi (not quite as excellent as my mom's, for sure, but still really good). And I'll admit that I'm a naan purist who can easily tell when a naan is done in a tandoor (a clay oven) and when it isn't - which is why Tandoori Times and Tandoori Village are leagues ahead of all the other Indian restaurants in the valley in that department. I took a taste of the korma and it was pretty tasty, but my other collague said his veggie biryani was a little too mild for him, which is surprising since the chicken biryani I've had at the Scottsdale locale has always been pungent with flavor.
In any case, as far as lunch goes, I enjoyed mine and am now amped that another option has opened up on this side the Valley. Sure, it could have been more pefect by overtaking the TGI Friday's near where I work, but you can't have everything now, can you.
4 stars (I'll save star #5 for dinner sometime).
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)