Pondicheri both comforts and enlivens
Modest dishes can dazzle as powerfully as high-wire acts, and linger just as long in the memory. Maybe even longer if they arrive at precisely the right moment.
Such were my reverential thoughts as I savored two humble takeout dishes from Pondicheri, chef Anita Jaisinghani’s vivid Indian “all-day-diner” that celebrates its 10th anniversary this week.
The restaurant had opened with a basic carryout menu after our weeklong deep freeze, or “Ice Harvey,” as some Houstonians have taken to calling it. Like many, I was worn down, out of leftovers and reduced to a few depressing pantry items. I hadn’t left home all week. I felt in dire need of comfort and warmth and revivifying brightness in my world.
Pondicheri has always provided those qualities — and more — in the decade I’ve been dining there. I’ve missed the airy dining room over the past year, with its tension between floaty fabrics and severe concrete; its beckoning baked goods under shiny glass cloches; its snug back-room cocktail bar with its stunning drinks and good cheer.
And oh, how I’ve missed Jaisinghani’s ever-evolving food, with its intricate spicing, strong colors and thoughtful ingredients. I always look forward to new items on the menu, but on the Saturday in question, I craved reassurance more than novelty.
I wanted to begin to feel normal again. A three-dal stew and a big tub of butter paneer — the pressed-farmers-cheese version of butter chicken, that beloved tomato-and-cream restaurant staple — seemed like just the thing to restore me to myself.
Perhaps I’d add a bottle of red wine (one of the things I wish I had had to see me through the cold) from Jaisinghani’s wonderfully personal wine list, which I’ve always admired and suits her food so well. Maybe some of her giant cookies, like the gripping chili-and-dark-chocolatechunk number I’ve grown to love.
What else? I would need a quart of rice to go with my curries. My eye fell on “avocado toast,” and suddenly I was seized with a need for it, even though I am not an avocadoa toast person and never have been. I don’t know what came over me. My brain was still a little fried, and the idea of avocado seemed powerful and irresistible.
Finally, I would require a cup of hot, milky chai, just to breathe its fragrance and warm my hands on the drive home.
That was the plan, anyway, until I got back to my car, stowed my shopping bags and took a sip of chai. Then I just sat there for a few minutes, with the motor running and the heat on, sipping and thinking how strange it was to feel warm again.
At home, I couldn’t wait: I spooned a heap of glowing yellow turmeric rice into a bowl and ladled on some of the dal stew, still warmish, and wolfed it down. Immediately I felt more grounded. I went back for seconds, borrowing a little of the yogurt-dressed fennel-and-herb salad that came with a side order of rice they had thrown in with my butter paneer, enjoying its briskness against the earthy lentils with their twinges of pungent seeds.
I opened a jar of Jaisinghani’s eggplant masala that I had added at the last minute and placed small blob on the side of my stewed dal to eat as a suave, pleasantly bitter relish, another counterpoint.
Somewhere between my first and second helping, I managed to open and pour a glass from the bottle of Gigondas I had picked out. It’s a favorite Southern Rhone of mine from way back, and this particular 2017 Font-Sane, imported by Houston’s French Country wines, had the spice and black-fruit notes to make the dal stew feel even cozier.
I needed cozy. Next day, the sun had come out. The butter paneer I had saved lit up in the sunshine with a radiance that made me just stop and stare.
It shone against the golden turmeric rice with its mesh of dark poppy seeds. And it tasted like the very embodiment of comfort: mellow with tomato, smoothed by cream and gentle warm spices, anchored by milky logs of pressed cheese, all tender innocence. There was roasty cauliflower for ballast, too, and the biggest demand the vegetable addition made upon my frazzled soul was that I had to actively chew it.
The beauty of butter paneer or butter chicken is that it soothes rather than demands. The dish is popular for the same reasons that creamy tomatobasil soup is a standard: It’s just bright enough to stimulate without requiring one’s full attention. You can kind of swoon into the dish instead of grappling with it.
Which is exactly what I did. And what I needed to do.
That whim about the avocado toast? This version proved too bold for the moment, too bristling with pungent mustardpickled vegetables and tart pomegranate seeds.
“Too interesting,” I reflected, laughing at myself. Ordinarily, I would have been engaged by Pondicheri’s treatment of this ubiquitous phenom. But not today.
Today I just needed seconds and thirds on that butter paneer. Followed by a gigantic cookie.