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Friday, December 13, 2002

By Sarah Billingsley, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Monotony is too often the curse of Indian restaurants. The menus are heavy on Northern Indian standards like chicken tikka masala and lamb vindaloo, the walls are hung with black velvet renderings of the Taj Mahal, the slow service reveals a dread to interact with the customer and the ubiquitous lunch buffets are heaped with soggy cauliflower.

	Sitar is along Bryant Street, in Highland Park. (Robin Rombach/Post-Gazette)

Thankfully, some Indian restaurants make a little extra effort to tweak this tedious formula.

At Sitar, open for little more than a year, located off the beaten track in Highland Park, Surenbra Singh and Kullwinder Kaur provide a broad range of traditional dishes, while also offering homey Indian fare you won't see on other Pittsburgh Indian menus. For example, there are three goat dishes at Sitar, and although goat is the most commonly consumed meat in India, it's certainly unusual in Western Pennsylvania.

The mission of Singh and Kaur is to offer fresh, healthful foods from many regions of India. Though their sauces are just as creamy as those at any other East End Indian restaurants, wonderful foods emerge from their tandoor, the traditional, cylindrical clay oven, powered by charcoal, that gets so intensely hot (500 degrees Fahrenheit) it can bake bread in a flash and sizzle a whole chicken in less than 10 minutes.

The oven lends another charm to the food: The rich red stain on the meat is the tattoo of the tandoor.

Despite a reputation for monochromatic browns, Indian is brilliantly colorful food. Sauces burnt orange by saffron and turmeric and the emerald hue of a chutney made from green mango pulverized with chilies, mint and cilantro contrast dramatically with snowy white rice.

The spectrum of dishes, in their spherical metal serving bowls, perfume Sitar's cavernous underground dining room. Several years ago, the space was occupied by Cafe Baci, an Italian bistro that left the low-hanging, saucer-shaped lamps and the curvaceous booths of burgundy leather and that lend a bit of naughtiness to the room. The backs of the booths are so high, you feel hidden; the meal is a rendezvous. I couldn't see the waiter approaching the table until -- hello! -- he stood over us with an armful of steaming food.

Sitar has seating at ground level, too, for large parties and people challenged by stairs.

The meal starts with a basket of crisp lentil crackers called pappadum, accompanied by a shiny dolly of condiments: tingly tamarind sauce, a sparklingly minty green sauce and onion chutney with a sweetness and choppy texture that guarantees it's made in-house. This snack is excellent to crunch on while you choose from the nearly 100 -- too many -- different dishes on the menu.

Sitar's soups were not successful. Tomato soup ($2.50) was tinged with a delicious smokiness, but it was served lukewarm. The waiter forgot to bring our mulligatawny ($2.50), a curried lentil vegetable soup, even after we reminded him.

The assorted appetizer for two ($6.95), two fat samosas and six pakora, served so hot they spat and wilted their bed of lettuce, was stand-out. Pakoras, fried vegetable fritters, are usually savory, but at Sitar they had a pleasant and unexpected mildly sweet flavor like a doughnut, detectable beneath a smart dusting of cumin.

Sitar's quick service made the chef's special assorted platter ($6.95) dramatic. The platter of seekh kabab, a sausage of herby minced lamb, chicken tikka and spicy, juicy shrimp came straight from the tandoor to our table so quickly the shrimp were still hopping in tune with thickly sliced onions on a searing iron-wood platter.

Sitar's sauces could be more distinctive. The gravy on the goat kadai ($11.95), spiked with green pepper, tasted similar to the gingered yogurt sauce, dotted with onions and mushrooms, of the lamb do piaza ($10.95). Both sauces were merely brown and spicy, not layered with flavors. The goat required careful eating; the meat was tough and mined with slivers of bone.

Highlights were chicken Madras ($9.95), tender through and through, its tangy, hot sauce slow-simmered with whole red chilies and tomatoes, and house special biryani ($11.95), a rice specialty descended from Persian pilaf. It was darkly spicy and studded with flavorful chicken, lamb and shrimp.

All meals are served with peshawari pulao, rice laden with cumin seeds, nuts and peas, a cut above plain basmati.

The best thing about Sitar are the marvelous breads. A bread basket ($7.95) containing aloo paratha (a layered bread stuffed with potatoes and peas), plain naan, fluffy as a pillow, and crunchy onion kulcha is the best way to sample. Peshawari naan ($3.50), studded with sesame seeds, slivered almonds, onions and plump bits of golden raisin, is also excellent.

Sitar has at least 15 appetizer and entree options for vegetarians, including a daal of yellow lentils in addition to the usual daal made with black or brown lentils.

After so much rice and spice, there's rarely room for dessert, but sticky-sweet Indian desserts are served in tiny portions, just the right size to satisfy a craving. Try homemade pistachio ice cream ($2.95), a mango shake or lassi, a sweet frothed yogurt drink, in mango, rose or salty flavors ($2.50). My favorite is gulab jamun ($2.50), the buttery sweet cheese balls soaked in honey, porous yet crisp-skinned as a doughnut outside and tender as mousse within.

Sitar's wine list is limited and unimaginative, featuring white zinfandel, chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon by makers such as Inglenook. I'll stick to imported beer, a Kingfisher, Taj Mahal or Heineken, until they start offering something more complementary, such as riesling, to play against the fire in the food.

In bigger cities, regional Indian restaurants are popping up, offering fiery South Indian vegetarian fare or the Portuguese-influenced dishes of Goa. Until that trend trickles into Pittsburgh, Sitar stands out for giving its customers the option to try something unique.

Sitar
5904 Bryant St.
Highland Park
412-365-0300

Hours: Lunch, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; noon to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Dinner, 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays; 5 to 10:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 5 to 9:30 p.m. Sundays.

The basics: Many choices, meat and vegetarian, mostly Northern Indian, wonderful breads. Seats 55 downstairs, 20 upstairs (usually reserved for groups). Upstairs dining room is wheelchair-accessible. No smoking. Short list of wines by the glass and imported beers; mixed drinks; BYOB if it is a brand the restaurant doesn't carry.

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