A Student’s Review of Sitar Indian Cuisine

500th 15th Street, Tuscaloosa, Alabama

 

How is it that a town overrun with ever-hungry students and what seems like fifty barbeque restaurants has only one Indian restaurant? This question plagued me as I drove down Fifteenth Street on my way to Sitar Indian Cuisine, noticing for the first time that at least every other building on both sides of the street housed some kind of eatery. Diners with cravings for sushi, burgers, burritos, po-boys, donuts, fried rice, mac-n-cheese, or organic smoothies all have multiple options to choose from in Tuscaloosa.

But if you just really want some chicken tikka? Not so. Sitar, a tiny restaurant with a uniformly beige exterior and a neon open-closed sign hanging in the doorway, is the only option for someone looking for Indian cuisine in this college town.

I have heard nothing but good things about Sitar from my friends, and I was excited to be eating there. Unfortunately, when my friend and I arrived at Sitar around 1:45pm, the buffet was already picked over. I had been looking forward to trying Indian flatbread, but the aluminum tray sitting beneath the green sticky-note labeled “NAAN” was empty, with only a few lonesome crumbs left at the bottom. The rice was running low as well, and one or two of the chicken dishes were similarly reduced to a thin layer of sauce with no meat. In addition to the buffet’s running out of food, its poor organization resulted in customers having to circle back and forth in order to fill their plates.

The friendly and relaxed environment within the restaurant did what it could to make up for the cramped buffet, out-of-date floor tile, and mustard yellow walls. The staff and waiters were welcoming and polite, and one of them quickly showed us a place where we could sit. My friend and I also noticed two or three families with young children enjoying their meals and several adult couples laughing and chatting with each other.

Whilst dancing my way around other customers at the buffet, I selected bhatura, chana masala, chicken tikka masala, tandoori chicken, and white rice. Of my choices, I especially loved the bhatura, a triangular fried bread whose mildly sweet flavor and puffy texture balanced the heaviness of the other foods on my plate, and the just-spicy-enough tandoori chicken, its crisp skin enveloping the tender meat.

The chana masala—chick peas in a savory sauce—was bland and did not leave much of an impression on me. The chicken tikka masala, on the other hand, left more of an impression than I wanted. The dish was as brightly colored as a hot chile and tasted as if at least ten of them had been included in the sauce. After taking a few bites, I became concerned that my taste buds would burn right off of my tongue, and I quickly chased the chicken with a mouthful of soft bhatura.

My favorite taste from my visit was not one of the dishes I chose, but actually a bite of aloo gobi stolen off my friend’s plate. The lumpy, golden brown puff of breaded and fried cauliflower melted in my mouth as soon as I broke through its crunchy outer layer. Lightly seasoned with what tasted like cumin and turmeric, the slightly sweet gobi was a refreshing contrast to the spicy chicken tikka masala that covered a large portion of my plate.

After sopping up the last bits of sauce from our plates with bhatura and paying for our meal, which was surprisingly expensive for a half-empty lunch buffet, my friend and I discussed our experience as we walked from the dimly-lit restaurant back into the sunlit parking lot. The small selection of dishes along with the not insignificant (for a college student) price tag was enough for us to decide that we would not likely return to Sitar for the lunch buffet again. I would be willing to go back one more time, when the restaurant re-opens in the evening for dinner, at which time customers are able to look over the menu and choose the particular appetizers and main courses that they want.

Perhaps my friend and I are simply not the target population of this small restaurant. Driving along Fifteenth Street for the second time that day, I noticed not only the ubiquity of the restaurants along the road, but also the way that many of them focus on inexpensive fast food to appeal to students. Indian cuisine, with its six-course meals and intricate mixes of roasted and ground spices, does not lend itself to the kind of restaurant that attracts cheap-skate college kids with undiscerning palates. But, Tuscaloosa is not just a university town, and not every restaurant makes its living by catering to the city’s under-twenty-four population (and thank goodness for that.) Sitar is one such restaurant that defies the odds in this town dominated by football and pulled pork.

My friend and I may not have loved Sitar, but adventurous Tuscaloosa-natives who are tired of burger joints overrun with students, and who value good food over good ambience, would likely find that Sitar is precisely the unassuming, family-run restaurant they’ve been looking for.