July 2004-Restaurant review: Taal Indian

Taal or nothing at All
Local Indian restaurant

The likely scenario is that your palate is chaste of the unique bouquet of flavor delicacies of the Indian persuasion encompass. I’d like to inform you that you have no reason to fear Indian food. Yes it combines flavors not often found together in this hemisphere. Yes, your nostrils will entertain unfamiliar, yet enchanting aromas. And again, with a hearty yes, I proclaim you will not entirely know what you are ordering until it arrives. However, as I and three close friends entered in through the wrong door of Fullerton’s tastiest Indian restaurant, I, immediately knew that our experience was going to be a rich one.
Taal Indian restaurant, situated across Nutwood from Cal State Fullerton next to Off Campus Pub is a place you have seen many times while climbing onto or off from the 57 freeway, but have probably never entered. It is worth the venture.
Upon entry your senses are battered with the intense aromatic fragrance of Indian spices as well as the kindness of the staff. As you can imagine being unfamiliar with the logistics of Indian cuisine, navigating a menu of entrées unpronounceable to the western tongue can be quite the challenge. Our questions ran the gamut of inanity: “Is that spicy”, “how spicy”, “what does that taste like”, “how do you say that word”... yet the staff was always gracious, courteous and informative.
To start off our adventure we were presented with a startlingly colorful dish of sizzling Chicken Tikka sautéed with onions and red bell peppers. The entree steamed and crackled as it was laid in the center of four hungry customers. As we ate we washed down the piping hot meal with three refreshing and markedly different Indian beers: The Royal Challenge; a medium bodied Lager with delicious flavor and a fine finish(our favorite), The Taj Mahal; a hoppier and more malty version of the Challenge, and the Flying Horse; a light lager with light citrus undertones.
As our four other dishes arrived in tandem, we shot each other knowing glances realizing that we were corporately approaching our limits. But when those exotic flavors hit our nostrils, eyes and taste buds, we couldn’t sate our appetites. Although I would have like it bumped up a few calienté decibels one of our group favorites was the XXXX spicy lamb prepared in a XXXX. I also found XXXX vegetables to be a surprisingly flavorsome and enjoyable dish despite the knowledge that the creme sauce that it came in must have negated all nutritional value.
And speaking of creme sauces, the XXXX chicken prepared with a splendid cashew sauce, although not a personal favorite of mine, was made well and was fully enjoyed by my dining compatriots. Yet, a word to the wise, make sure to diversify when you order. A tragic flaw in our dining strategy was that we consumed too many of the rich foods on the menu, which, while savory, need to be balanced out by dishes on the other end of the taste spectrum, like the Tikka Chicken.
To conclude our expedition into the Indian unknown, we cautiously divvied up our dessert of XXXX, a set of two reddish balls of a sweet cheese bathed in honey. Intrigue you? They’re really better than they sound. And as we collected ourselves and headed for the door, I couldn’t help but picture us as a pile of lugubriously gorged out college age brothers coming home on vacation for a binge of Mom’s cookin’. What a feast: bring your appetite and your sense of adventure.