Nirvana: A Taste of India: What’s Vegetarian Editorial Review

This Massachusetts Avenue restaurant serves a full menu of tandoor classics, chicken tikka masala and lamb vindaloo included. But a vegetarian eating here isn’t stuck choosing between rice and a plain salad. Its vegetarian side runs deep. Deep enough to build a full meal without touching the tandoor section at all.

Order the masala dosa for something substantial and distinctly not another curry-and-naan combo. Saag paneer and paneer tikka masala cover the classic cheese-and-spinach and cheese-in-tomato-sauce routes, both real entrees, not a side dish dressed up. For vegan options, several dishes carry a “Vegan” label right on the menu: vegetable samosas, vegetable pakoras, aloo mutter, mixed vegetables, tofu do piaza. Add dal makhani, a slow-simmered black lentil dish, and garlic naan, and the table never needs a meat dish to feel complete. Chef Baldev Singh runs the tandoor. More than 20 years in Punjabi cooking behind him. It shows in how the vegetable dishes get seasoned, not treated as an afterthought to the meat menu.

Labeling only goes so far, though. Five or six vegan dishes get a clear tag. Vegetarian dishes that aren’t vegan don’t. Saag paneer and paneer tikka masala, both meat-free, sit on the menu with no indicator at all, next to chicken and lamb dishes in the same format. Someone who doesn’t already know Indian food well enough to spot “paneer” as cheese has to ask the server rather than read it off the page. Not great for a restaurant otherwise doing decent work marking its vegan plates.

One tandoor and one prep line handle meat, seafood, and vegetarian dishes alike here. Standard for an Indian restaurant this size. Nothing on the website or menu points to a separate vegetarian prep area or a dedicated fryer.

The restaurant markets itself as ranked in the top 1% of Cambridge restaurants. Take that with the grain of salt any restaurant’s own marketing deserves. What holds up independently is the range, a menu built for a mixed table, not a single-diet crowd, with enough vegetarian depth that it doesn’t read as an afterthought bolted onto a meat menu.

Mains run $17 to $18. Samosas and pakoras run closer to $7 to $8 as starters. That’s moderate for the area, in line with other sit-down Indian restaurants near Harvard and Central Squares. Doors stay open daily from late morning through late evening, takes reservations through OpenTable, and has outdoor seating in warmer months. That makes it workable for a group where half the table wants tandoori chicken and half wants nothing that touched a grill. There’s a bar too, so the meat-eaters can get a cocktail while everyone else works through the dal makhani.

Go if you want real Indian food with a mixed group and don’t mind asking your server which dishes are vegetarian. Look elsewhere if you need everything spelled out on the menu itself. Either way, you eat well. Just budget a little more legwork for the vegetarian dishes than the “Vegan” label on the samosas would suggest.