restaurant

Raga Asian Indian Restaurant, Clearwater

All hail the return of Indian and Asian food by the Sharmas. Our patience is rewarded.

By Laura Reiley, Times Food Critic
Published February 14, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Joseph Garnett Jr.] Traditional Indian cuisine at Raga includes chicken tikka, front, malai kebabs with rice, left, and chutney kebabs. A cool mango lassi is a classic drink.

Raga Asian Indian Restaurant
16080 U.S. 19 N, Clearwater (just north of East Bay Drive)
(727) 531-6400; www.ragaflorida.com
Cuisine: IndianHours: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. lunch buffet daily; 5 to 9:30 p.m. weekdays, until 10 p.m. weekends
Details: Amex, V, MC; reservations accepted; full bar
Prices: Lunch buffet $7.95; Sunday lunch buffet $10.95; dinner entrees $10.95-$16.50

- - - 

CLEARWATER - Medhu and Naresh Sharma opened Raga Asian Indian Restaurant in Tri-City Plaza last month without much fanfare. At first glance, you might think that's because not much fanfare was warranted.

After all, the couple opened one of the area's first Indian restaurants in the same shopping center back in 1994. Called Mahal Indian Cuisine, it was followed by their next restaurant of the same name on U.S. 19. Business flagged on 19 because of ongoing construction, so they closed almost two years ago. And now: Raga.

It shares a parking lot with Dollar Tree and Party City stores. Comfortable but a little more stylish than many Indian restaurants, the corner storefront purveys mostly familiar Northern Indian staples. But that's only part of the story.

Medhu conducts Saturday morning Indian cooking classes $45, including lunch. The restaurant has a spice corner in which they grind their own garam masala and so forth. At lunch during the week it's a Northern Indian buffet, but on Sunday a grand buffet showcases the lesser-known vegetarian delights from Southern India. And at night it's a la carte, with an interesting smattering of Chinese-inspired dishes. Raga boasts a full bar, a rarity in Indian restaurants.

So, there's a lot going on. The menu reflects that, too, with a synergy of smoldering curries, cooling yogurts and pungent sauces.

At lunch during the week, the buffet is not vast. Glide past the steam tray and maybe you'll see a nice chana masala ($10.95 at dinner), chickpeas stewed gently with ginger and onion.

Down at the end there's a saag chicken ($13.95 at dinner), a major slow burn of chicken pieces with soft spinach. Black-eyed peas, lentils, potatoes and cauliflower blushed by turmeric, a beef curry with a kick of garlic - all of these can be ladled around a pile of fluffy basmati rice and scooped up with wedges of fresh-from-the-tandoor naan. A dumpling dish with a sweet-and-sour sauce (the sole Chinese-ish offering at lunch) was the only one that didn't quite work. Too tangy.

Many of the same dishes are offered a la carte at dinner. For the indecisive a vegetarian thali is essentially a combination platter of several legume dals in small stainless steel bowls with cucumber-doctored yogurt, peppery lentil pappadam, rice, naan and that most peculiar of Indian desserts, gulab jamun ($3.95), pastry balls bobbing in sugar syrup.

Better for dessert is the rice pudding ($3.95), bits of basmati rice suspended in a cardamom- and rosewater-scented custard almost the thinness of creme anglaise. On the other hand, a refreshing yogurt mango lassi ($3.75) functions as both beverage and meal-ending sweet.

At the Sunday buffet, the Southern Indian dishes change, but recently it featured a traditional sambar, a dal and veggie stew dolled up with a heady mixture of green curry leaves, tamarind and little fragrant seeds. Medu wada, another Southern dish, is like Indian doughnuts, also flavored slyly with curry leaves.

Of Raga's buffets I'm of two minds. On the plus end, you get to try lots of tasty dishes for one low price. And on the negative, everything is spiced to the lowest common denominator (e.g., a little wimpy). This can be remedied with a visit to the pickle and condiment zone. There are chili pickles (really more sour than hot) and a mild cilantro sauce. I wish there were just one more, called something like the Exterminator. Dab a little on your dal, a little behind each ear, and you're in business.

Laura Reiley can be reached at (727) 892-2293 or lreiley@sptimes.com. Her blog, the Mouth of Tampa Bay, can be found at www.blogs.tampabay.com/dining. Reiley dines anonymously and unannounced. The Times pays all expenses. Advertising has nothing to do with selection for review or the assessment.

[Last modified February 12, 2008, 17:27:22]