6751 N. Blackstone Ave, #104 (near Herndon)
438-7200

Hours: 11am-3pm, 4:30pm-10:30pm

$35: huge lunch for two people + leftovers
samosas, 2 orders of naan, 2 entrees, and dessert

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Tandoori Night’s unassuming appearance is overshadowed by its accommodating service and wonderful food. There is surely something to please every vegetarian and any of their carnivore/omnivore friends, and vegans will note that the wait staff is not only clear on which items are vegan, but they also have suggestions on how several other items can be easily veganized.

We started with some garlic naan, requesting oil instead of ghee (clarified butter). Tandoori Night offers several choices of naan: plain, garlic, onion, veggie, sweet, and others. The menu also offers naan kebob rolls (including veggie naan rolls, though be sure to specify no meat or sour cream in the filling if you’re vegan). We also started with the samosas; to our surprise, they were served with a small salad and some amazingly spiced garbanzo beans. In fact, the samosas could have been sufficient for one’s lunch, if one were so inclined. Next time, I may choose the vegetable pakora appetizer, but the samosa filling was so incredible, it may be a difficult choice.

For our entrees, we ordered saag panner (sans the panner) and alu gobhi. Saag panner is typically homemade cheese and spinach in a spicy sauce, but we got mushrooms instead of the cheese. The alu gobhi is cauliflower and potato cooked in spices. Though this is a drier type of sauce, it still carries a strong and delightful presence. I was never a big fan of cauliflower until I started eating more Indian food, and Tandoori Night’s cauliflower dish similarly strikes me as the kind of dish that can make anyone excited about cauliflower. The spices in both of our entrees were perfect.

Other vegetable dishes include mixed vegetables, daal makhni, channa masala (garbanzo beans in a spicy sauce), bhindi masala (lady fingers with onions and tomatoes), bangan bhartha (roasted eggplant with spices and tomatoes), mushroom matter (peas, herbs, and cheese, though you can probably request this without the cheese), malai kofta (vegetables in a creamy sauce), vegetable curry, and mushroom curry. Each of these is served with rice and costs around $8. There is also an extensive variety of non-vegetarian dishes as well.

To top it all off, one of the desserts is even vegan—the gulab jamun, which are “rice pastry balls, delicate insides with a lightly fried crust soaked in a syrup.” Once these were served, I immediately recognized them as my favorite Indian dessert (which I teasingly always referred to as Indian donuts) from before I was vegan, and I had since assumed that they were not vegan friendly. They were just as good as I remember, and they are a perfect way to over do it after an already amazing, filling meal.

Fortunately, we didn’t eat all of this in one sitting, but we had some fantastic leftovers. I find it hard not to get a little carried away in Indian restaurants because everything always sounds so good to me. Also, I sometimes go through phases of heavy tofu and “meat substitute” use, so it’s wonderful just to enjoy some really well prepared vegetables and legumes. I’m sure I’ll order too much food during my future visits to Tandoori Night as well!