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Best Bargain Restaurants: Cafe Taj

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Cafe Taj
McLean

You could make a meal of bread at this sleek, chic restaurant done up with black stone tables, postmodern columns, marble floors, and neon. The bread comes stuffed with minced lamb in the classic keema nan, and in more unusual versions with cashews and dried fruit or spiced chicken, almonds, and nuts. You might think of these puffy rounds as an Indian pizza or a calzone. Pappadams, fried lentil crackers, are usually ordinary, but here they are crackling from the oven--and addictive.

But don't fill up on bread. That would mean missing wonderful tandoori lamb chops with a rub of aromatic spices and lemon juice or the succulent tandoori chicken on the bone (also available on the lunch buffet). Salmon and seekh kebab are among the other tandoori dishes.

Indian "stews" are well done, from the chicken saag, cooked with spinach and green herbs, to the saag gusht, lamb in a spinach-based curry, to lamb vindaloo, the hottest dish on the menu.

Of the vegetarian dishes, malai kofta, croquettes made with farmer cheese, potatoes, and carrots and cooked with cream, spices, and fruit, is also successful--never mind that the fruit tastes like, and turns out to be, canned fruit cocktail.

For starters, try the lively samosas and pakoras or the strips of chicken in spicy batter. And don't skip the lentils perfumed with crushed cardamom pods that come as sides with tandoori plates.

Though there is a good beer and wine list, the mango lassi, a mango, yogurt, and rosewater "cocktail," is refreshing.

Cafe Taj , 1379 Beverly Road, McLean; 703/827-0444. Open Sunday through Thursday 11:30 am to 2:30 pm and 5:30 to 10 pm, Friday and Saturday 5:30 to 10:30 pm. AE, D, DC, MC, V. MapIt!

QUALITY: ****Excellent; *** Superior; **Very Good; * Good
PRICE RANGE: $$$= Very Expensive; $$ Expensive; $=Moderate; ¢=Inexpensive

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