Roti Grill

In our continuing quest to keep our faithful readers (both of you) current on new and interesting places on the Dallas eating scene, we’ve decided to review Roti Grill. The place stands in the location of the old Army/Navy Store just south of Knox Street on McKinney. Its food is a definite upgrade over camouflage pants, Swiss Army knives and face paint. The atmosphere is oddly contemporary: think 2001 – A Space Odyssey, only with friendly service instead of a murderous computer. Fans of the north Dallas/Collin Indian food scene will recognize the minimalist orange d?cor as the de rigueur color of the moment for hip South Asian restaurants. This is only one of two Indian restaurants that we know of in the 214 area code, and it’s close to downtown, to boot. Ordering is done at a counter and the food is brought to your table, which makes it difficult for mooching co-workers to "split" the check (you know who you are).

The good news is that the menu offers a lot of variety and flexibility in what you can order; the bad news is that the variety of options can make choosing your order a complex experience. Complex bad, simple good. Still, with plenty to choose from, even an Indian food novice will find something to suit his or her taste, and you can even specify how spicy you want your food. All the basics are there as well, so if you have a hankerin’ for some good old tikka masala and samosas, there is no need to scan that racing form of a menu. Dishes run from about $9 to $13 when you include a drink, and the starters range from $2 to $5, and refills from the soda fountain helps with the spice factor. The mango lassi (a yogurt with mango juice drink) is your best bet to curb the spices. On one visit, there was a serve-yourself chutney bar, but on other visits (between the two of us, we’ve been there four times in one week) we had to ask for extra chutney.

Like the salsa at a Mexican restaurant, an Indian restaurant’s benchmark is its samosa, an appetizer that is essentially a fried pastry-puff filled with potatoes and other vegetables (and also comes in a lamb version). Happily, the samosas at Roti Grill passed the test and did their job, as Eric Cartman would say, by making us hungry for more. We tried several dishes including chicken jalfarezi, lamb vindaloo and lamb in green curry sauce. The vindaloo was spiced just about right and the green curry lamb had a nice cilantro tang to it, but the chicken jalfrezi was didn’t pack the punch we’d hoped for. The chicken masala, a staple of Indian restaurants and the most novice-friendly entr?e, was very good and had more spices than is typical in this cream-based dish. The dishes came with the traditional basmati rice, but we also ordered naan (Indian bread), which comes to the table hot, fluffy and fresh from the tandoor oven (The first time the phrase "hot, fluffy and fresh" used in Pegasus News? We think so!). You can order several of the dishes regular or Texas style, which means that it includes naan and is supposed to be a larger portion, although it looked to us to be the same size as a regular order. For dessert, we tried kheer, Indian rice pudding. Creamy and tasty, with ground pistachio on top that really adds to the flavor, fans of plain old rice pudding will love it.

Service was somewhat uneven; our servers brought the wrong dish once and forgot to bring another dish, but they were also quick to correct their mistakes. We’re sure that will all be smoothed out as the restaurant settles in. Roti Grill is a new kid on the block, they still have some growing pains, but we’re feeling generous and giving them three gavels on our famous five gavel scale. Roti Grill is a welcome additiona to the growing Indian food scene in Dalals and we hope if it will fit into the Knox-Henderson dining scene well.