Turmerik--Restaurant Review

Friday night, E and I took friends out for a delicious dinner at Turmerik--a restaurant billed as Indian fusion. The food from the dinner menu (as opposed to the snack-type menu) was some of the best Indian food I've had, with the lamb biryani, eggplant curry, and tandoori vegetables receiving good reviews from our group. The paneer spinach "meat"balls in a creamy yellow sauce won the award for the night. We never really found the fusion (although it did seem that one of the naan was made with buckwheat. Perhaps this is fusion? Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Indian food to say) since most of the ingredients and styles were vaguely familiar Indian food stuff. I'd say it's more like gourmet Indian, mainly northern. More expensive than most Indian restaurants, but also worth it. If you want a nice ambiance for sit down Indian, you now have an option. If you have vegetarians to feed, it's an even better option--plenty of stuff for them, with meat to keep the carnivores happy.

The wine list had a huge build up, but I wasn't that impressed. They have lots of expensive wine available, but if you aren't going to drop over $100 on a bottle of wine, the list becomes average. There was no agreement on red v. white. So we went with a half bottle of each.

The only half-bottle of white in our price range was Calera chardonnay. Kind of nice when the list forces you to pick something you'd never try otherwise. Even better when it's good. I've never heard of Calera, but it's just south of the valley (in an area I never really thought of making wine, much less good wine), so in theory, we could go visit. The chardonnay was one of the ways I like 'em: mellow, floral, and minerally--very Burgundy-like, which made sense when I went to the web site.

For red, we went with Alexander Valley Merlot. I haven't tried any of their wines in a while. I was pleasantly surprised--a reasonably-priced, good merlot from a well known vineyard? These things exist in California? God bless the grape glut.