Mehek offers spicy Indian punch to Princeton

Homesick for mom's cooking? The three-week-old Indian restaurant Mehek, which replaced Sally Lunn's Tearoom, will make you feel right at home.

Located at 164 Nassau Street (a few doors down from CVS), Mehek already draws crowds from all over Princeton. An upstairs dining room and teahouse and a downstairs "take out" restaurant, it is open from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. for teatime every day in addition to regular meal hours. Describing itself as "a palette of the Indian spice art," Mehek, meaning "aroma" in Hindi, offers a cozy ambience, soft Indian music and a caring staff.

I went to Mehek on a recent Friday with my Indian roommate, Ishna Berry '08, and her friends from New Delhi, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. When we arrived, our reservation had been botched, so we had to wait for 10 minutes by the door. We ate the sauf kept in small bowls near the entrance, sweet digestives that my group cooed were the best they had had in a while.

Once seated, the American servers were efficient and very friendly. As a result of my table's diversity, we made informed and intelligent choices from the extensive menu with the intention of sharing all of the dishes. We were first presented with an appetizer called aloo tikka chaat, a potato dish drenched in a rich and flavorful red bean sauce. Next arrived the uncreative dish, my "safety order" at Indian restaurants — malai (chicken) kebab. In comparison with the hundreds I've eaten in the past, the kebab at Mehek was light; the poultry was tender and well-cooked but slightly under-seasoned.

The highlight of the meal was the garlic and regular naan — the famous, puffy bread. It arrived with a series of dips, including chutney and mint, and we consumed great quantities of it in a matter of minutes because it was light and almost tasteless. The buttered chicken, chicken makhani, arrived next; it was very popular at our table, although, I stayed focused on the naan. The chicken, drowned beyond recognition in a dark red, creamy sauce mixed well with rice, added a nice punch to our palettes.

Jolly Luthra, the roly-poly, huggable co-owner, agreed to answer a few questions about his brand new restaurant. He prefaced our conversation, however, with a deeply sincere apology for making us wait for our table at the beginning of the meal. "I feel very bad," Mr. Luthra lamented, and would only stop apologizing after I reassured him that our wait would not affect Mehek's review. Mr. Luthra is from Bombay, India and previously owned an Indian restaurant in Franklin Park that closed for unspecified reasons. The ambitious Luthra was enthusiastic about Mehek's success in its first weeks of business. "Business has been excellent! Much better than I expected," he said, adding that Princeton students have just started to discover Mehek and encouraging them to add Mehek to their list of favorite restaurants in town. He plans on waiting for business to settle before opening a delivery service. I pushed the envelope when I asked him to remark on competitors Kalurri Corner and Masala Grill. "I have eaten at both and have no comment," Luthra said.

At the end of our meal, we were asked repeatedly if we wanted dessert until we were presented with a complimentary dish called gulkand, a small, grainy pot of condensed milk with Indian herbs. Although the idea of eating condensed milk initially repulsed me, I became addicted to this dessert after one bite; it was soft and unlike anything I'd ever tasted.

En fin, my picky Indian roommate called the food "good but not spicy enough," while the others commented "This is the best meal I've had in a while" and "We have to come back here!"

The food was delicious, the room well-lit (although it could have been dimmer) with Indian mantles adorning the walls and tables. Jolly and his staff were extremely jolly, and Luthra commented, "We don't want our food too heavy or oily here. This is where you should come if you want a good, home-cooked Indian meal."

Mehek is more like a family living room than a fancy restaurant, its food and atmosphere certainly worth the wait and a return visit.