Mike ‘n’ Mike: Taj Mahal is slightly expensive, but worth price

Michael Miller
Terre Haute’s own Indian restaurant, Taj Mahal, located at 1349 S. Third St., serves up a mean curry. 

I was curious just how mean, and since I’ve been watching entirely too much “Man vs. Food” recently instead of making headway on my master’s thesis, I was up for a food challenge.

I figure, hey, I’m an English grad student and a poet. I’m pretty tough, right? I’ll order the six-star curry, just to show that subcontinent that I am all that is man.

That’s not exactly how it worked out.

Instead, the curry hugged me tight with all six of its arms and called me “sundar” in an angry, “Deliverance” tone of voice.

Curry is a sneaky one. Bites one through three I spent decrying the food, talking about how unimpressed I was with the intensity, philosophizing about this being like the Spinal Tap amp that went up to 11 when it could have just gone up to 10.  A six on the curry scale? 

Please.

Then I started sweating. A lot.

Not like the meat sweats you get from eating too much turkey on Thanksgiving.

No, these were my body’s cries for help, asking me to please stop shoveling spoon after spoon of lava into my mouth.

But I was on a mission, and I wasn’t about to let my reflexive desire for self-preservation get in the way of my food-ego. I pressed on.

And pressing on triggered a pretty neat biochemical reaction.

See, when your body needs to cover up intense physical pain, it starts pumping out endorphins, like when you’re running like hell from a tiger. 

No time to think about that missing arm. Just run.

Well, eat a spicy enough curry, and your body does the same thing, mainly out of fear of death.

So I hit a second wind in my curry-quest because I was literally getting high—not on the food I was eating but on my body’s terror of said food.

This wasn’t really a good idea because, as I kept going, I could feel that my nose and throat were starting to swell up.

Not to a dangerous point, I don’t think, but breathing was noticeably more difficult.

I survived, so I guess I can declare this one Man 1, Food 0, but it was a pyrrhic victory. 

For the next hour, the only thing that kept me from throwing up was the realization that if I did, six-star curry would lodge in my sinuses, and the only way I’d have been able to get it out was with a bullet.

Curry: push your limits today!
_________________________________________________________________________

Michael Lushbrugh

Our Taj Mahal Indian restaurant is not quite in the same league as the original building in India, but if you’re looking for honestly good Indian food at somewhat reasonable prices, then this is the place to go.

The establishment has Indian-themed decorations and definitely seems like the place in which the cooks use shamshirs to cut the meat before cooking.

The dishes prepared and served at the Taj Mahal are the basic staple dishes that most Indian restaurants serve: curries, kormas and tandoori, involving various meats and vegetables and tons of spices.

It is recommended that you stick with chicken or lamb curry since those dishes are still recognizable.

I find that Indian food is something of a gamble. Most of the time you’re not sure what you’re eating because the tastes and the colors don’t quite match up.

That is not the case with curries and kormas.

The food itself was excellent.

For people new to Indian food, Taj Mahal provides a spiciness chart that goes from one to six, or from weak to face-melting.

The food came to the table soon after ordering, presented in small cauldrons.

I enjoyed a moderately spicy dish of lamb and shrimp curry.

While it seems strange to mix lamb and shrimp, the tastes of both seemed to complement each other in a satisfactory way.

As in most Indian cuisine, there was plenty of seasoned rice and a giant piece of naan bread.

The service, on the other hand, was average at best.

While our food came quickly, our waiter seemed to disappear right when we needed him most.

It took entirely too long to get refills on our water, and we actually ended up requisitioning our own supply from a pitcher on the nearby bar.

This was the only blemish in an otherwise-perfect dining experience.

The value-for-money ratio on this outing was on the low side, but this can be forgiven, seeing as how we were ordering off the dinner menu and not the lunch menu.

Per person, we ended up spending around $16, not including tip.

The general excellence of the food made up for the higher prices.

One complaint to make about this restaurant is that it was empty of customers.

This place has the makings of a Terre Haute institution, but the owners need to do more to attract the locals.

I, for one, hope this restaurant is around to serve the community for years to come.

Michael Miller is an English graduate and a former high school teacher

Michael Lushbaugh is a education graduate student and is currently in the Transition to Teaching program.