Philadelphia: Reviews: Bindi | Dine (Restaurants)

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Reviews: Bindi
April 24, 2008
By: Brian Freedman
bfreedman@aroundphilly.com

Once in a while, there’s a payoff to all the buzz surrounding a high-profile new restaurant. It doesn’t happen all the time--or, for that matter, all that often--but when it does, it makes all this obsessive focusing on food and the exploits of local chefs seem not only worthwhile, but sane.

So when word got out that Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran were working on an Indian spot, the fevered speculation and buildup of shameless expectations began almost immediately. To the food set, after all, they are the royal family of Midtown Village, reigning over a block-long mini-empire that includes Lolita (which made tamales hip and consuming vast quantities of tequila socially acceptable), Grocery (which made take-out cool), and Open House (which, if you’ve ever bought anything there, likely made your apartment just a bit more livable).

The questions, however, began to spice up the speculation almost as soon as each new detail emerged: Would Turney’s take on the dishes of the Subcontinent be true to their origins or to her instantly identifiable culinary style? How would Safran riff on Indian décor without either maintaining too light a touch or resorting to the vaguely exotic kitsch that so many such restaurants do? And what, pray tell, would their guests be expected to bring to a BYOB Indian restaurant--Pimm’s?

Fortunately, there was nothing to worry about. Following a good-but-not-great start (a meal there several weeks after it opened left me not underwhelmed but, well, whelmed), the 13^th Street Dream Team is running yet another restaurant that may very well redefine an entire culinary tradition as fans of Indian food thought they knew it.

Tender strips of Bengali five-spice-roasted duck crowned little two-bite-sized pani puris, or fried bread the texture of gougères. Hidden within those fried-bread bases was ajwain-scented sweet potato (think of the flavor of thyme and you’re close), which in turn was presented on a plate drizzled with thick apple-raisin chutney. That juxtaposition of the familiar (duck, sweet potatoes) and the exotic (ajwain, softly spicy cranberry water to anoint each bite with), it turns out, is the genius of Bindi’s menu and Turney’s cooking here.

That tension between the known and the foreign made itself felt in the seekh-kabab lettuce wraps, a visually stunning presentation that almost begs to be eaten with the hands. Nestled in the center of each Bibb lettuce leaf was an aromatic grilled meatball spiked with chili heat and given crunch with the addition of a slightly bitter radish salad.

Really, you could make an entire meal out of just ordering from the appetizer section of the menu. But to do so would be to miss out on some of the most exciting entrees in the city right now. Alleppey-style seafood stew avoided the most common pitfall that tends to undermine such a dish: overcooking. Indeed, as with any item comprised of a number of different proteins--paella, bouillabaisse--this seafood stew could have been ruined in a million different ways.

What arrived at my table, however, was a study in subtlety and careful cooking: butter-rich scallops, their sides lightly browned; meaty shrimp; thumbnail-sized clams and surprisingly light mussels. All were not only cooked to their optimal temperatures, but swam in a flavorful coconut broth and bore only the perfume of curry leaf and red chili.

Even the vindaloo, as familiar a dish to fans of Indian food in America as, say, General Tso’s chicken is to admirers of take-out Chinese, was made to seem brand new again. It had to do with the black cumin: black cardamom rub, and the medium-rare tenderness of the meat, and the pungency of the pickled cauliflower, and the sweet heat of the mango-date chutney, and the way in which the spiciness manifested itself in layers, first the bite of something peppery, then the slowly blossoming burn at the center of the tongue…who knew that the unfailingly familiar could seem so exciting, so paradoxically exotic?

I had brought along a bottle of Spanish rosé from the Rioja region to wash all this down with, though, really, I didn’t drink much of it. I was too busy pouring glass after glass of mango sharbat, a refreshingly fruity, cardamom-perfumed punch that the waitress spiked with the vodka we’d brought along for just that purpose.

The only part of the meal that sharbat didn’t pair well with was dessert, though the creamy chai--so much more interesting than the stuff poured at the big coffee-shop chains that comparing them is analogous to considering the relative merits of, say, apples and rocking chairs--played that role perfectly well on its own.

Just be careful: The intoxicatingly scented cardamom cake is impossible to stop eating until it’s gone, and the portion is more than generous. The ice cream, standing sentinel like two minarets on the plate, was far less dangerous. The portion is small enough that you can finish the entire thing without slipping into a food coma.

But if you do overeat and grow lethargic, the consequences are minor. You probably won’t really want to leave the restaurant anyway. Once cocooned inside the dark, undeniably sexy space, asking the people at the next table over what that amazingly scented dish that they’re eating is, and halfway through your pitcher of booze-spiked punch, there’s a good chance you’ll realize that this is exactly where you want to be for the remainder of the night.

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