Tandoori Night

Tandoori Night sits in Palmanova, one step back from the seafront promenade and in the middle of one of the densest restaurant runs on the island. The kitchen is North Indian and Pakistani in character, it works halal, and the tandoor — the clay oven the house is named after — is not decoration in a corner but carries a long section of the menu in its own right. If you come down from your hotel looking for an Indian, you do not get the short version here. The menu is unusually long: eighteen starters alone, plus main courses, chef's specialities, a lamb page, a beef page of its own, the tandoori grill section, vegetables, seafood, biryani, breads, rice, children's dishes and desserts. This is the architecture of the British-Indian restaurant as it is known in England — and Palmanova is a place where British guests recognise it instantly. What Tandoori Night pulls out of the tandoor The grill section is the core of the house. Boneless chicken marinated in spiced yoghurt, chicken leg on the bone, lamb tikka, seekh kebab from minced lamb, prawns, fish — and paneer for anyone eating without meat. It comes with lemon, sharply dressed onions, red and green peppers and a curry sauce; nothing here arrives dry. Two items explain the house particularly well. One is the mixed grill, which brings chicken tikka, lamb tikka, seekh kebab, chicken leg and prawns together. The other is the biryani that carries the house name: basmati rice with chicken, lamb, prawns and beef in a single dish. Both are orders for people who would rather not choose. The grammar of the menu Indian restaurants of this school work from a grid: a handful of sauce styles, each of them available with chicken, lamb, beef or prawns. Tandoori Night runs that grid through consistently — madras, jalfrezi, korma, dopiaza, dansak, rogan josh, balti, bhuna, methi, pasanda, karahi, vindaloo, masala and chilli garlic. The beef page stands out. Fourteen beef dishes on an Indian menu are rare; most houses stop at chicken and lamb. Here the full sauce grid runs over beef as well, down to tarka with lentils and garlic and achari with pickling spices. The chef's specialities go finer: badami with cream and almonds, mughlai with tomato cream, cheese and nuts, pathia sweet-hot-sour, chasni with tomato and mango chutney, mint and lemon. The butter chicken is the dish guests name most often when they talk about the place. Without meat, and what goes with it The vegetable page is not a token gesture but seventeen dishes of its own: daal makhni and daal tarka, palak paneer and matar paneer, bombay aloo, aloo gobi, saag aloo, chickpea masala, chilli paneer with soy sauce — and okra, the lady's finger, as a bhaji in its own right. Vegan and vegetarian dishes are marked on the menu. The bread goes beyond the usual: naan plain, with cheese, with garlic or with both, keema naan with minced meat, peshwari naan with almonds, coconut and sugar, plus thick chapati from the tandoor, thin tawa chapati and tawa paratha. The rice follows the same principle: pilao with cinnamon, turmeric, cumin and clove, alongside versions with mushrooms, coconut, lemon, egg or minced meat. Who the house suits The place is set up for families — there is a children's menu of its own — and for larger groups, for whom a set menu for two can be booked ahead. You can reserve through the restaurant's own booking system; anyone who would rather eat back at the apartment can have the menu as takeaway or delivery. Alongside the food, Tandoori Night runs a cocktail list and describes itself as an Indian restaurant with cocktails — a combination rarer than it sounds. Dessert stays classic: gulab jamun, rice kheer and gajar ka halwa made from carrots, plus ice cream, banana split, mango lassi and milkshakes. That, too, is a list written with children in mind.