Exotic dishes from a complex menu

By Eleanor Ostman

If you love to eat and are a Netflix subscriber, you’ve got to watch “Somebody Feed Phil.”

I am addicted to the show enthusiastically hosted by Phillip Rosenthal, who earned his TV chops by creating “Everyone Loves Raymond,” and is now eating his way around the world. For a decade, often with a local foodie as guide, he’s dived into dishes of wherever he’s landed. Seldom does he find something not to his liking, even foodstuffs that would make the ordinary diner hesitate. He waves his arms, dances, hugs the chef and says “M-m-m” a lot when food pleases his palate. Although a skinny guy, Phil eats prodigious amounts, though rarely finishing a plateful on camera. He usually gives a bite to his brother Richard, who produces the show.

I’ve had my share of global gluttony, so where Phil goes is often where I’ve been. That’s what makes the show such fun for a food writer like me. But even if you’ve never owned a passport, you’ll be both entertained and educated by Phil’s encounters with foreign fare. Not that he doesn’t also visit American cities, but I suspect he gets his biggest kicks when he chows abroad.

Recently he traveled to Mumbai, India, and watching him eat in chaotic markets or extravagantly dine in fine restaurants made me want to have a taste of India. My own two trips there were long ago and what I ate is a bit of a blur. I loved the naan bread and curries, but I needed to reacquaint myself with the flavors.

So I invited a friend, Anu Dean, who was adopted from India and came to the United States as a toddler. Her whole family returned to India for a year (her grandparents had been missionaries there) and she had a chance to discover her native foods. Also, her mother, who lives near Lake Josephine, often cooks Indian fare.

Two Indian restaurants are in the Roseville area: India Palace on Cleveland Avenue and Namaste India Grill & Brewhouse on Lexington Avenue, near the Arden Hills Cub Foods.

We chose the latter because Anu likes it, and because its name sounds so Indian. Namaste is an all-purpose Hindu word for hello, goodbye and welcome, and for me it would be hello to a restaurant I’d never visited.

White tablecloths in a spacious venue greeted us. Just this past summer, the restaurant expanded into an adjacent strip mall space, and tables were quickly filling on a Monday night— obviously a popular place.

“Brewhouse” is attached to Namaste’s name, so I expected house-made beers which had been made there by a previous tenant. Not so, but the restaurant did offer a brand called Maharaja, which sounded the most Indian. I ordered a bottle, and then we tackled the menu. It is huge! So many dishes to choose from, which are in a different culinary language from what I know. I knew I wanted naan, so we ordered the garlic version among many others. Excellent!

Anu suggested Paper Dosa as a starter, and indeed, a 16-inch long roll looking like brown butcher paper but much thinner, arrived. We tore off delicate hunks tasting of fried lentils and dipped them in sambal or coconut chutney (more creamy than the usual chutney) for a gentle immersion in Indian flavors.

My favorite dish was roughly-chopped vegetables in coconut curry. Then came beef josh, a Kashmiri dish of beef and potato chunks in a yogurt sauce tasting of cloves, cardamom, cinnamon and ginger. It echoed the coconut curry sauce because the spices were similar. I wish we had ordered something with another flavor profile, but nevertheless we attacked with torn naan.

It proved more than Anu and I could finish, and I do wish that all three dishes hadn’t arrived simultaneously so we could concentrate on each, but that is the Indian mode of service.

But there’s always room for dessert, right? Anu suggested gulab jamun, basically doughnut holes in a sugary syrup. We managed to polish off all four of them. If I had had them in India all those years ago, I don’t recall, but they will remain in my memory now.

Dinner for the two of us, including my beer and tip, was $72.94. I paid the bill, then went home to write a rough draft of this review.

I took a break to watch “Somebody Feed Phil” and caught him in Dubai, another place I’ve been, where the opening scene has him on the top floor of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world.  He was served a towering hamburger in a gold (yes, real gold) plated bun. He immediately dropped it on the carpet.

Phil is perpetually entertaining, even if a bit clumsy.

Namaste is at 3673 Lexington Avenue North, Arden Hills. 651-330-6522