Offbeat Auburn Podcast — India Garden

Inder Pannu takes advantage of a short post-lunch lull to sit down with us for a chat. Just click on the button below to listen or check us out on iTunes!

 

To understand how happy (overjoyed is probably more accurate) my wife and I were when news that the restaurant India Garden was coming to Auburn, a little bit of personal background is probably in order. When we moved to the South from the Midwest nearly three years ago, we moved into a region with one of America’s most beloved culinary traditions. Sadly, it’s a cuisine we appreciate largely from a distance because we are long-time vegetarians. It’s humble roots and tradition of making a lot out of a little means that a host of rice and veggie dishes owe a portion of their flavor to the addition of a nice piece of pork.

Southern cooking shares a lot with one of our favorite cuisines, and one of the most vegetarian-friendly, Indian cuisine. Both feature relatively simple base ingredients and both put a premium on slow cooking. What really distinguishes them, though, is the use of spices…lots and lots of spices. When you walk into Auburn’s India Garden, there’s definitely something in the air. Indian cuisine is first a feast for the nose. The spice trade literally put India on the map, for Europeans anyway, and Indians have had centuries upon centuries to devise ways to combine those spices with spinach, potatoes, and vegetable of all kinds into a seemingly endless array of dishes.

All that being said, don’t think that a trip to India Garden isn’t a delight for omnivores as well. One of the key elements of Indian cuisine is the clay oven called a tandoor. Tandoors cook hot, they cook long, and they’re most often used to cook meats to succulence. Well, so I’ve heard, but clearly it’s a hit locally based on the way people load up their plates with tandoori chicken at India Garden’s lunch buffet.

India Garden is located at 1251 Opelika Rd. and opens for lunch featuring a buffet at 11:00 a.m. Full dinner menu begins at 5:00 p.m.

– Kelly Walker