Punjabi Tandoor

San Diego, CA (The Joy of Food) — Eating out is often about finding a bargain. The desire (or need) to eat cheaply often trumps the desire to eat well. Rare is the place that allows you to do both. This is not one of those places. 

As you’d guess from the name, Punjabi Tandoor has the same Punjabi-inflected menu you’d find in almost every other Indian restaurant in southern California. It is a modern-day hole-in-the-wall, a tiny shop nestled between a Catholics in Recovery and an interior design business in one of those matchy-matchy tree-lined suburban office parks. Inside, there are a handful of tables in a spotless room perfumed of Lemon Pledge. Service at the register is quiet at best and surly at worst, especially if you ask questions.

This spot seems to be pretty consistently praised and highly adored by a legion of devoted fans so maybe I’m missing something, but across half a dozen visits, the food has been bland, lukewarm, overly salted, and not worth the price, which by the way, has continued to climb like everything else with the times. Every place has an off day, but from where I sit, this one operates in off-day mode as a matter of routine.

Heated trays behind plexiglass keep a smattering of curries, the spinach dish saag paneer, and whatever specials of the day warm. Not a buffet but rather dinner or lunch combinations are available, where you get up to two mains plopped on your plate along with naan, rice, raita, and/or kheer.

The curries are not what you’d expect, missing the bold flavors and intoxicating spices that you’d link with Indian cooking. The textures are all wrong too. You can’t tell the difference between chicken, mushrooms, beans, or potatoes, all so mealy and lacking flavor. The saag spinach dish, though creamy, is more of the same, tepid and tasteless, all with no seasoning to speak of and lacking any discernible spice level. The basmati rice, usually fragrant, sweet, and nutty, is just awful and lacks any of these notes here.

The naan is a huge portion that overflows the plate, thinner than what I’ve seen elsewhere, and is quite literally some of the saltiest I have ever eaten. It is also dry as a bone, missing a coat of cholesterol-laden butter (ghee), which I suppose isn’t entirely a bad thing, and while freshly warmed, it lacks the char that gives naan its contrasting soft and crisp textures. Dipping it in the curries adds some essential moisture.

As prices continue to climb in post-pandemic times and specials here are inching upward of $13, any bang for your buck this might have afforded in the past is long gone. For a few dollars more, you can eat well a few minutes away at Charminar, or if you’re more centrally located, there’s still the passable Tandoor shop in the Mission Valley area. I urge anyone seeking decent Indian flavors at reasonable price points to check out these places instead.

Written by Joy

Thanks for reading. The Joy of Food blog celebrates eating well, traveling often, and living la dolce vita. San Diego, California is home base, but thoughts are from all over. Reviews and photos help to highlight wonderful (or not) food experiences from around the world.

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