Alum creates inventive Indian food

Hindu or not, visitors leave with a healthy appreciation for Karma -- both the belief and the Philadelphia restaurant.

Soft Indian music sings in the background of Karma Restaurant and Bar, located at 114 Chestnut St.

The restaurant is the brainchild of 2001 Wharton MBA graduate Munish Narula.

Narula -- frustrated with the strain of maintaining an investment banking job in New York that kept him away from his wife and son -- decided to move back to Philadelphia and opened Karma around Thanksgiving.

To start, my guest and I chose to drink mango lassis -- similar to eating a pureed mango -- and ate aloo papri chat -- a dish made of lentil dumplings with potatoes and chickpeas and topped with chutney and yogurt.

Although we were initially skeptical of its appearance, the dish proved interesting and delicious. A second appetizer, aloo nazakat, consisted of sections of grilled potatoes stuffed with pistachios and raisins. We also tasted the lukhmi samosa, which consisted of potatoes and peas stuffed in a fried flour pastry. Appetizer prices ranged from $3.50 to $7.

The restaurant serves eight types of bread. My companion and I sampled the garlic nan, the traditional Indian bread, and tandoori roti, a tortilla-like bread, both of which were warm and soft and around $3.

The tandoori phool -- cauliflower florets cooked in a tandoori, or clay pot oven, and flavored with tikka -- is a unique creation of Karma and was amazing. Admittedly not an item one would consciously select from the menu, the dish is not one to miss.

For the main course, I ordered the subz makhanwala, which is a mixture of vegetables in makhani gravy. The flavors in this dish -- and all the dishes we tried -- were distinctive and well-combined.

My guest requested a shrimp dish, tarka jhinha, and we sampled the paneer tikka butter sasala, which featured paneer cheese in a rich makhani gravy.

All entrees were served with basmati rice and ranged from $10 to $17. Although more expensive than Indian restaurants around campus, Karma is worth the value in both service and food.

Narula's impeccable attention to detail was evident in both the unique presentations of Karma's dishes, as well as their fresh, deep flavors.

Desserts, rich but light, are served in small portions and finished off the meal nicely. We were served the Indian mosaic -- milk dumplings soaked in a cream sauce and covered with fresh fruit -- and gulab jamun, a piece of cake-like pastry enriched with cardamom, saffron and almonds.

Not on the menu were Indian rice pudding and gajrela, a dish of shredded carrots, sugar, milk and spices. The latter was exquisite, with a hearty and subtle sweet taste.

The chef was hand-selected by Narula from Delhi, India. Narula says he plans to mix up the menu, which features the top dishes from the different regions of India, every three months.

Karma also serves a buffet lunch Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

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