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Restaurant review

Splendor of India

Laziz brings exotic flavors to Clearwater, with much to savor: spices both subtle and fiery, tasty breads, rich meats and vegetables.

By CHRIS SHERMAN
Published October 6, 2005

	[Times photo: Scott Keeler]
	Laziz owner Francis Sadiq, left, and managing chef Vikas Sharma offer flavorful vegetables as well as rich and creamy meat dishes. Clockwise from bottom, basmati rice; an appetizer of paneer tikka, chunks of homemade cheese sauteed with onions, green peppers, and spices; chicken tikka masala, boneless chicken marinated and cooked in a creamy tomato sauce, green pepper, onions, and spices; lamb bhuna, pieces of lamb cooked with herbs and spices and garam masala; and Laziz naan, bread topped with chicken, garlic, and cilantro.

CLEARWATER - The unassuming Oakwood Plaza at McMullen-Booth and Enterprise roads can conceal the truth no longer: It's secretly a college town.

Yep, 1,100 students come and go from classrooms of Florida Metropolitan University in the office buildings, and if you look closer, this strip center has the requisite collegiate touches. A coffeehouse with poseurs and professors lounging at the sidewalk tables, a pizza place, a copy shop and even parking problems. Now it's got the finishing touch, an Indian restaurant, Laziz.

The arrival of Laziz and the whiff of cumin here is part of the slow maturation of Pinellas' most problematic culinary crossroads and proof that curry now has a permanent place on the local menu.

Okay, not all the places are permanent - my favorite India Garden lasted barely a year on Gulf-to-Bay - but others pop up faster than they used to. We now have south Indian sources or udipi and Indian restaurants in downtown Tampa and St. Petersburg.

More and more we have a chance to celebrate the two greatest triumphs of Indian cooking, good breads and vegetarian feasts.

Laziz has them both, even if its roots are in New Delhi and north India's appetite for lamb, beef and chicken. The kitchen still squeezes a rainbow of flavor from the plainest vegetables - beans, lentils, potatoes, spinach and cauliflower, long cooked with tomatoes, garlic, peppers and onions, in red sauce, cream or butter. Plus there are classics of two vegetables that get little respect, whole baked eggplant and okra masala.

The difference is in nuts, yogurt and spices. Laziz takes special pride in its spices, and depending on what you order it may be justified. If you stick with chai tea and batter-fried chicken breast pieces or cheese, you'll be disappointed.

Varying the ratio of cumin, peppers, cardamom and curry mixtures, forms of cooking and regional styles produces a wide range of dishes from tart vindaloos to dhansaks packed with lentils to stir-fried jalfrezi. Unfortunately servers knew nothing more than the menu description on my visits; I wished for better guidance on paper or in person.

Try kormas with gravies of cream and nuts, biryani's fragrant piles of rice, sag or palak dishes with creamed spinach (and often handmade cheese) and most anything from the tandoor oven, especially the yogurt-marinated chicken. If you can't guess how rich butter chicken is, you shouldn't be in an Indian restaurant.

At Laziz, for subtlety try lamb sag, where the cumin and pepper are mild, but the lamb, spinach and perhaps a bit of yogurt make a rich creamy gravy. Or the palak paneer, in which spinach is enriched with nuts and cream and chunks of hand-made paneer cheese. Infusing the nuts and cream with ginger in the chicken korma is rich enough; you have to be reminded to eat the chicken.

Laziz does well on India's breads, which appeal to palates of all levels of fire proofing.

Naans, pitalike flatbreads, come dressed or stuffed with garlic, potatoes or a sweet coconut paste. Less elaborate are crisp papadums of fried lentil flour and cumin, my favorite, or pori, fried whole wheat that puffs up into big, bland balloons. Laziz has others such as roti and paratha from the tandoor oven.

For firepower, I cannot resist a vindaloo. Here I had shrimp with the biting vinegar, sharp tomato and some extra pepper. You should also put some spicy vegetables on the table, like cauliflower and cumin, or black lentils.

None of these melanges are complete for me or most Indian fans without our preferred garnish, chopped red onion, mint sauce and such. Laziz's best is a thick tamarind sauce that distills its sweet earthiness into a syrup; the worst is a too-thin cucumber yogurt. You do have to order most of these garnishes separately, which meant I wound up missing "pickle," the sweet-sour fruit relish that adds still another flavor to the Indian palate.

For a finale, a dish of kheer looks like a thin, milky imitation of rice pudding. One spoonful, however, will replace fire with the sublime cool of almonds and pale rosewater.

For most of us, Indian food like this is an education - and a semester abroad - for the tongue.

- Chris Sherman dines anonymously and unannounced. The St. Petersburg Times pays for all expenses. A restaurant's advertising has nothing to do with selection for a review or the assessment of its quality. Sherman can be reached at 727 893-8585 or sherman@sptimes.com

2475 McMullen-Booth Road

Clearwater

(727) 797-7541

Hours: Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., dinner 5 to 10 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday

Details: Credit cards; beer, wine; outdoor seating

Prices: Lunch buffet, $7.95; dinner, $8.95 to $14.95

[Last modified February 1, 2006, 11:03:50]