I was staying out in the Rockville/Gaithersburg, MD area on a recent visit to Washington D.C. for a trade show. I was in the mood for Indian food one cool fall evening and I found a couple that were sort of near the hotel I was staying at. The first one I went to was about a 10 minute drive south from the hotel. However, it didn't have a bar or any alcohol to enjoy with the meal. (I found that Montgomery County's liquor laws for restaurants and stores were rather, well, strange with different levels of licensing.) OK, since I couldn't get a beer with my Indian food there, I went to my second choice that was about a 10 minute drive the other way from the hotel. I punched in the address in the GPS and about 20 minutes later I found myself in front of Royal Tandoor Fine Indian Cuisine & Whiskey Bar.
Royal Tandoor managing partner Sanjeev Gupta actually started out as a travel agent. In 2012, he helped start an international executive travel agency that catered to business people, corporations, and people looking for unique destinations for weddings, honeymoons and sporting events basically in the Western Hemisphere (North, Central and South America along with the Caribbean). But after the pandemic curtailed much of the travel business, Gupta wanted to do something a bit different - like run his own restaurant. In May of 2021, along with a handful of partners and family members, Gupta opened Royal Tandoor, an upscale Indian restaurant complete with a whiskey bar. That's something you don't see at a lot of Indian restaurants.
Royal Tandoor is located in the Muddy Branch shopping complex - basically a series of businesses in a strip mall with a Giant Food grocery store anchoring the overall location. It's located just off Muddy Branch Road near where I-270 and I-370/State Highway 200 meet up in Gaithersburg. (see map) There was plenty of parking near the front entrance to Royal Tandoor as it was approaching 8 p.m. on a week night.
When I walked into Royal Tandoor, I was sort of taken aback. I don't want to say the decor was garish, but it was, well... It was pretty gaudy in there. Lots of gold accents, pillowy high-backed booths along one wall, tapestries on the other wall above banquette seating along the wall. There was a small bar at the end of the main dining area.
Off to the side of the main dining room was another dining area that featured another wall of banquette seating with decorative metal tiles along the wall. A third room - the Royal Room - was in the back of the restaurant. It's used for private gatherings or receptions. I took a quick glance into the room as there were a few people in there having dinner. It was quite as ostentatious as the two dining rooms, but there was still some items that jumped out such as the multi-trunked elephant painting on the wall.
Sanjeev Gupta was behind the bar when I walked up to it. There was already a guy seated at the bar eating a meal and I asked Sanjeev if I could sit at the bar. "Please," he gestured to me to have seat. Sanjeev was helped out by another guy Ameresh. Ameresh looked Anglo but he had a heavy accent when he spoke English and was speaking Hindi with Sanjeev Gupta. Both were very pleasant men and very helpful all night long.
Behind the bar on the wall were two televisions that were playing cheesy Bollywood movies from what appeared to be the 70's and 80's. I immediately loved the place in that they had old South Asian movies playing in the restaurant. There was a full bar with a number of whiskies, vodkas, rums and bourbons on the shelves. I counted 17 different types of Scotch whiskies on the menu. But to me, I was very happy to see that they had Kingfisher beer. I ordered up one of those from Sanjeev as soon as I saw the bottle of Kingfisher lined up with other beers on the back bar.
Ameresh brought out some complementary papadum lentil wafers for me, then moments later he brought out a mini Samosa with some mint chutney and some plum sauce. It was a really nice touch and I appreciated the gesture.
They had dropped off a menu for me to look through right after I sat down. I have to tell you the menu was interesting and very authentic Indian. They had a section that described "Delhi Street Food" including Pani Puri which were dough balls stuffed garbanzo beans, sweet chutney, and potatoes and deep fried. Appetizers included a kabob platter, tandoori chicken wings, and Dahi ki Tikki - a potato patty simmered in yogurt.
From there the menu went to a number of entrees including lamb, goat, chicken and seafood dishes. They had ginger rosemary lamb chops on the menu, as well as Tandoori shrimp, chicken kabobs, and Afghani Trangri kabobs - chicken drumsticks marinated with cashew paste, yogurt, spices and grilled in their tandoor oven. They had a number of biryani offerings as well as Indo-Chinese food such as chicken fried rice, Manchurian chicken or vegetables, and noodles with either chicken or veggies. My vegetarian colleague would have been more than happy with the vegetarian part of the menu at Royal Tandoor as they offered more than a dozen different vegetarian dishes.
I was thinking about getting the butter chicken, and the goat curry was also interesting to me. My former colleague loves goat - he married into a Jamaican family who makes goat quite a bit. And he has ordered goat curry when we've eaten together at Indian restaurants in the past. So many choices, but I ended up boiling it down to the lamb rogan josh with medium heat. I also got some garlic naan to go along with the lamb rogan josh. A small caldron of basmati rice came with the meal.
From the first bite, I was ecstatic. There was some spiciness to the rogan josh, but it was tolerable. The chunks of lamb were tender and I could cut them with my fork. The garlic naan had great flavor with the garlic and cilantro mixed in with the naan bread. It was one of those meals where you have so much food and you think there's no way that you could eat everything in front of you. But the next thing you know, you're using the last piece of garlic naan to sop up the last bits of rogan josh gravy in the serving bowl. It was a fantastic meal.
As I was sitting there savoring the meal I just had, Ameresh brought out a complementary gulab jamun - a deep fried dough ball dunked in a sweet syrup and sprinkled with powered sugar. This reminded me of the Indian restaurant my former co-worker (who likes goat) and I went to in Toronto last year and they gave us complementary gulab jamuns to take back to our hotel with us. Man, I was stuffed but the sweet and delectable dessert was too good to pass up.
After I finished all that, I seriously considered getting a scotch for an after dinner drink. But I had already had a couple Kingfishers and I needed to drive back to the hotel. And since it was night and I wasn't familiar with the area, I thought it was best to pay up and head back to the hotel. Besides, they were starting to close up for the night and I'm sure they didn't want me hanging out any longer than I needed to be there.
Had the first Indian restaurant I had gone to had beer to go along with the meal, I would have never found Royal Tandoor. I have to say, the food at Royal Tandoor was some of the best Indian food I've had in my travels. It was also probably the most pimped-out Indian restaurant I've ever been in. Well, that's probably harsh to some - let's just say that it was the most visually loud Indian restaurant I've ever been in. I can't say enough about the hospitality shown to me by Sanjeev and Amaresh during my visit. They did a great job of making a single diner feel comfortable and the little touches such as the complementary mini-samosa and the gulab jamun were deeply appreciated. I tried to talk a couple friends I ran into at the trade show into go there with me a second night, but they declined. It was their loss as Royal Tandoor was an outstanding - and somewhat lucky - choice.
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