Chatting with Café Tajmahal’s Chowdhury
Friday - January 16, 2009
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Honolulu residents can no longer complain of a lack of good Indian restaurants. In the past 10 years our Indian dining choices have gone from dismal to delicious, and Café Tajmahal on Waialae Avenue is the latest restaurant to join the growing number.
I stopped by to chat with owner Kabir Chowdhury about signature dishes at Café Tajmahal.
Were you born and raised in India?
I was born in Bangladesh where cooking was a large part of daily life. My mother and sisters were mostly responsible for the cooking, but I would sometimes follow my mother around asking what she was doing and learning about the food.
How did you come to Hawaii and when did you open the restaurant?
I came to study years ago at UH. About eight years ago my wife’s brothers opened Maharani on South King Street and I joined them. Last year my wife and I opened Café Tajmahal together.
The restaurant is tiny, and if you blink driving on Waialae Avenue you’d miss it. It’s very intimate, and I love that it’s tucked away off the beaten track.
Yes, it’s small - it seats about 38 people. We’re behind the Fat Greek Restaurant on Waialae Avenue and next to Sabrina’s. Once people find us, they easily find their way back! One of the things that people comment on is that they feel like they’re dining at home when they come here.
Except the Indian food is better!
Yes, we hope so. We have a mix of Northern, central and some Southern dishes, so people get to try different flavors and styles of cooking. Some dishes are with sauces, some are tandoori and there are lots of curries, kebabs and tikkas.
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What are the signature dishes - the ones that people can try here but perhaps not find elsewhere?
Well, our lamb dishes are very good - the lamb curry masala is lamb cooked with onion and garlic and ginger and the traditional spices. There’s a lamb vindalo for those who like it on the hot side. We do fish dishes and shrimp, of course, and our chicken curry is a favorite - it’s hard to pick just one! Everything is really quite good.
Your vegetable samosas are bigger than any I’ve seen anywhere. And your pakora are not like the ones I’m used to you know, the round, sometimes doughy kind.
Yes, the samosa are a specialty made by my wife. They’re big enough to share easily. And we make the pakora flat because we like the evenness of the cooking. The round ones are often not cooked all the way through. This way, they’re perfect.
And they’re addictive. I ate three at one sitting!
I think for people who are coming here for the first time, the combination plates you offer are the best way to go. You can try so many different things in one order.
Yes. There’s a number of combination plates. The one that’s for four people has four different entrees - that’s any kind of lamb, beef, chicken vegetable or seafood dish - and the meal includes rice and naan bread and dessert. The cost is less than the cost of four people ordering separate meals, so it’s worth trying- and it’s also more like the way we eat at home.
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And you have the kind of wine list that I love.
(Laughs) It’s BYOB, and we just charge $1 per glass for cork-age. People all seem really happy with that.
I think that adds to the fact that people feel quite at home here. They bring their own beer, wine ... they share dishes ...
There are a lot of vegetarian options here - some of them are really different. I would think that vegetarians are delighted when they see your menu.
We do have a lot of variety on our menu, and I think that’s one of the things that people like.
There are a few dishes that have become really popular already with vegetarians. One is the Eggplant Tikka Masala, where the eggplant is baked in the tandoor oven.
I’d recommend that to anyone who likes eggplant - the eggplant is really soft and tender, and its fun to see the bright-red batter instead of the normal gray-ish, purple eggplant. It’s a fun dish.
Thank you. We try to offer a wide variety of dishes, and try to offer things that are a little different.
So address the inevitable “heat” question, if you would.
People invariably expect Indian food to be really hot, don’t they?
Yes, always. And the truth is it’s not. It’s very manageable heat for most people. We make all of our dishes mild to medium. Almost everybody can handle the kind of spices that we use, and if people want their food hotter, then we can easily do that. It’s the comment that we hear most from customers. They come for the first time and say “It’s not nearly as spicy as we thought.”
Café Tajmahal 3036 Waialae Ave. (Next to Sabrina’s, behind The Fat Greek).
Street parking, lot parking in front of the restaurant and paid parking at City Mill.
Reservations: 732-6496
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