I used to live in a basement apartment but when people asked I'd call it the garden suite. Sometimes all you have to do is say something to believe it even if it's the furthest thing from the truth. Thus it is with Tandoori Palace, which isn't a palace by any stretch of the imagination. But when it comes to the food, this place reaches palatial flavours, as if the peasants led a revolt and took over the royal kitchen.

Hole-in-the-wall is a generous way to describe this restaurant. Just as there is anti-matter as a mirror of matter, so there is anti-interior as the opposite of décor. There's a kitchen, of course, and a clay oven for tandoori cooking, but that's about all you can say about it. The décor is really in the aromas drifting through the joint.

Now I heard about this place on a tip from a fellow foodie who enjoys the finer things in the edible life but isn't afraid to slum it now and again because, as we have learned, that's sometimes where the best food is hiding. So Peaches and I paid a visit and though the interior practically begs takeout rather than dine-in we kind of sat on the fence and did a little of both.

Thus we began with veggie samosas ($3.50) and this may perhaps be one of the finest of the samosa species I've tangled with. So utterly different from other samosa encounters that I barely recognized them for what they were. First off, they're done in the clay oven so there's a certain amount of incidental blackening and charring. Second, the wrapping is more of a naan quality than the flaky pastry carapaces so prominent in the samosa realm. Punchy potato and pea centre and wonderfully doughy exterior made for a great samosa experience.

This is not an extensive menu but what they do they do with spicy aplomb. There's a sure and sometimes frivolous hand at work here stirring up the sauces and hitting the old spice rack. Still, subtle balances of flavours abound as evidenced in the great butter chicken with its tangy creamy sauce and tender cubes of poultry. The lamb vindaloo proved to be a dark, sombre mire, its surface almost reflecting the slow drip and constant sniff of my spice-saturated nasal passages. Slight bite of vinegar behind the spices and altogether a winner, although the odd piece of lamb was not as tender as the rest of the flock.

An aloo gobi turned out to be a peasant-class dish, meaning really big chunks of potato and nicely cooked, tender but still toothsome cauliflower, all aglow with a turmeric hue like a pale sun cutting through an early morning fog on the Ganges.

The naan bread here is equally marvellous, hot, buttery and fresh from the tandoori oven and, for $1.99, a real bargain. It was enough naan to make a pair of pants. And that's really the key to this place. Few dishes run over ten smackers, prawn masala and the halibut curry are some of these, so whether you're trying the seekh kebab, the tandoori chicken, the bhindi sbuzi or the lamb biriyani, the savings and flavours are the drawing card. And though this palace physically is the equivalent of building castles in the air the food is more than real and well grounded.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

Palatial flavours in a humble environment

RATINGS: Food: B+ Service: B Atmosphere: C

Review

Tandoori Palace

Where: 1439 Commercial Dr.

Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-254-8452

Drinks: Soft drinks

Hours: Noon-11 p.m. every day

© The Vancouver Province 2008