Amy Stocklein
A potato and onion aloo tikki patty makes a delightful burger.
India, neck and neck with China for the greatest population of any nation on earth — over 1.3 billion — has as many regional cuisines as China does. But while American Chinese restaurants often differentiate among Cantonese, Sichuan, Hunan or even Fujian styles, Indian is reduced in most American restaurants to “north” and “south” cuisines.
I can’t say that the west side’s Chaat Cafe delves too deeply into a new geographic exploration of Indian cuisine. But it focuses on a side of Indian dining that Madison doesn’t often see: the food of the streets.
Indian food isn’t nearly as intimidating to Anglo palates as the unfamiliar terminology and menu page count might make it seem. The best way to grasp this truth is with the cafe’s namesake dish, chaat. Canada has poutine. Mexico has nachos. India has chaat.
The samosa chaat is the fundamental version. It takes the vegetable samosas you’re likely already familiar with from other Indian restaurants — they are like big crispy fried wontons, essentially — but chops them up, mixes them with chickpeas, and covers them in saucy chutneys and chopped veggies not too dissimilar to pico de gallo. It’s not finger food, exactly, but it’s very casual. And very satisfying.
Chaat Cafe’s casual and satisfying vibe is a core tenet of the restaurant. There are wraps, including a hearty paneer tikka wrap with all the flavor you’d expect from a plate of paneer tikka masala, but in a tidy portable format. I’ll be back for the gobi Manchurian wrap, filled with fried cauliflower given a Chinese treatment. The paneer pakora is basically India’s version of the fried cheese curd, and Chaat Cafe dusts them ever so slightly with garam masala for an extra kick.
This is the kind of walking-around food that Madison’s many Indian restaurants don’t focus on, not nearly as acutely as Chaat Cafe. There are even a few sandwiches on the menu, called “burgers,” but not containing a beef patty. The aloo tikki burger deploys another classic fried snack from the Indian food vocabulary: a patty slightly larger than a hockey puck, made of potato and onion. It’s topped with lettuce, tomato, and cheese, and with a handful of basic but garam-dusted fries on the side, it’s a perfect fast food lunch that isn’t the corporate kind of fast food. The chicken burger, on the other hand, is just a chicken patty sandwich with no real character; skip that.
It would be a daring, if not downright silly, Indian restaurant that didn’t offer the usual “Indian restaurant in America” favorites, and Chaat Cafe isn’t here to mess around. There’s a deep section of paratha (flaky Indian flatbread) to get you started; the mooli (shredded radish) paratha is stuffed with loads of the oniony hash, an excellent foil to the pat of butter that’s served alongside it.
I wondered what form the okra masala might take. Would it be a stew, prepared similarly to the greens in saag? Or would the okra be lightly stir- or pan-fried, giving it a textural balance to the creamy soft interior of the vegetable? The result: unquestionably stew-side. It was mildly seasoned, certainly not spicy, but present on the plate. It was pleasant and not slimy as okra can be, but I had higher hopes.
Meats are chicken and lamb only, but with the diversity of Indian spices and seasonings, this is hardly a limitation. Butter chicken, that old standby, is rich and nutty-sweet, with a gravy that falls somewhere between the silky-smooth gravy at Maharani and the oily and broken gravy that lesser Indian kitchens can sometimes produce. Lamb pasanda features a deeper, smokier gravy, still with that rustic level of finishing. It has character. It’s great for dragging some of that paratha through.
As befits a walk-and-eat menu, Chaat Cafe is busiest during lunch; both dine-in and takeout traffic spikes. Weekday dinners are quiet, often just you, your party and maybe some music. It’s an unassuming dining room, no velvet drapes or ornate statuary. It’s a different kind of Indian dining in Madison, and the more interesting for it.
Chaat Cafe
705 S. Gammon Road; 608-709-5252;
chaatcafe.us; 11 am-10 pm daily; $4-14
