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FOREIGN FLAVOR
Cuisine of India spices up dishes with curry, ginger, and more.

When Rahul Saigal left the Viceroy of India to start his own restaurant, Viceroy's chef Avdar Auby joined him.

Together Saigal and Auby have successfully introduced the food of their native country to customers at Saigal's Cuisine of India restaurants in Mount Prospect and Naperville.

The Mount Prospect restaurant has been open for five years, Naperville's for two.

The Mount Prospect location makes it easy for newcomers to experience its fare.

Not only is each dish on the menu well explained, but there are also several sampler-type meals that allow diners to try a variety of items...

The butter chicken was a favorite. A rich butter-and-cream based tomato sauce enveloped pieces of chicken that had been marinated in ginger, garlic, yogurt, vinegar, and spices. This luscious dish was filling and a real treat.

The lentils in the dal makhni were quite tender. They are served in a mildly spiced cream gravy based on onions and tomatoes. A touch of ginger in the gravy gives the dal makhni a fresh spring flavor. The vegetable curry consisted of peas and small cubes of homemade cottage cheese in a very mild sauce. Peas pulao was predominately nutty-flavored long grain basmati rice cooked with green peas and a bit of seasoning.

To get an idea of how Cuisine of India serves individual entrees, we ordered the murgh vindallo, or chicken potatoes in a curried tomato and onion sauce. The dish's spiciness is prepared to your liking. Since it was our first visit to Cuisine of India, the waiter recommended the dish be prepared at the restaurant's mild setting, which turned out to be sufficiently spicy for our palate.

Diners wary of the unfamiliar flavor of curry will be pleasantly surprised at how delicately the spice is used at Cuisine of India. In all the dishes I sampled, curry was expertly blended with other Indian spices.

The results were exotic flavors that made me pause and truly taste what I was eating.

By Mary Beth Pandolfo
Daily Herald Correspondent