The marketing for Jaipore Xpress, a small Indian restaurant chain with an outpost in Guilford, clearly emphasizes takeout. So the fact that the Guilford location served my friend and me a sit-down dinner as tasty as any I can remember feels like a special secret, albeit one I’m eager to share.
It was the service and the food that really wowed us. “Wowed” would be the right word even if, after delivering the last of our dishes—more on those soon—our already attentive server hadn’t transformed into a table-side entertainer. Asking us if we wanted to see something amazing, he stuck a toothpick, vertically, into the cork of an empty wine bottle, then clasped together the tines of two forks and poised them on the end of another toothpick, whose free end he then perched, at a 90-degree angle, on the tip of the original toothpick—a gravity-defying balancing act on a fulcrum the size of a pinpoint.
And while I was impressed by this neat display, my friend was positively astounded, as if she were witnessing magic, not physics. She was such a good audience that he gathered several more toothpicks and set up a series of fun toothpick logic puzzles for her. She giggled with glee while trying to solve them, and he giggled with joy watching her work them out.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t resist returning to our meal, which had opened with the Veg Samosas (three for $8) and the Lassoni Gobi ($14). The outer dough of the samosas, flaky and scrumptious, was fried to blonde, not chestnut, and dusted just so with a very fine salt. Inside the dough, a classic and comforting potato-pea filling was pumped up with cardamom and a confident spice heat.
The Lassoni Gobi, meanwhile, was a visual shock and a tasteful balance. The candy-red glaze covering the mountain of chewy, crackly, corn-battered cauliflower like recently erupted lava was addictively sweet with just a hint of heat. Rustic cuts of white onion and bell pepper brought levity and variety, as did a scatter of scallions. It’s not quite a dish I’ve seen anywhere else, and I’ll be thinking about it for a while.
That also goes for the Aloo Dhansak ($19), a beautifully savory entree whose depths feature soft potato whales swimming in a creamy yellow sea of lentils, spinach and curry. The salt level was perfect, the restraint incredible.
My usual Indian go-to, the sauced chickpea dish Channa Masala ($16), offered melt-in-your-mouth texture and even more sweetness than usual, which must have had something to do with the “sun-dried mango powder” mentioned on the menu. The mango was a fun note to try and tease out, but overall, I think, this iteration of the dish was a little too simple for me.
Last to arrive was a huge platter of the Veg Fried Rice ($14), part of a small Indo-Chinese section on the menu. Laced with peas, carrots, red peppers, white onions, scallions, green and purple cabbage and, crucially, mint, it was light and bright, savory and herbaceous, with a buoyancy you don’t expect from a pile of something fried. The salt level was, once again, perfect.
It’s possible that food this good can still taste great after a takeout ride home. But it can’t possibly taste better than it does straight from this very special kitchen, brought by a server who might just shake some toothpicks out of a jar and amaze you.
Written and photographed by Dan Mims.
