Tashan

You have never seen an Indian restaurant that looks like this or tastes like this. We are at Tashan Restaurant in Bedford, Massachusetts, right down the road from the Burlington Mall. And if you're ready to expand your palate and try some dishes you have never had before. This is the ultimate place to do it.

Tashan opened up in 2021, it is a beautiful spot. They have a nice bar, great lighting, and an absolutely gorgeous mural that takes up an entire wall. This place is family owned and operated by the Sood family. Their idea was to come up with a more modern, more stylish kind of Indian restaurant, and they have absolutely hit it out of the park. So there are all the familiar Indian spices and dishes that you may know, but they're presented in a more modern, cutting edge way.

Let's start out with some appetizers. This is the Murgh Malai Tikka, what's essentially like a Chicken Kebab or a chicken skewer, they actually present this one vertically, so you got a nice big stack of that white meat chicken with some beautiful peppers. The key to this dish is the Malai sauce. It is actually poured table side. It's like a reduced cream gravy. It's rich, it's satisfying, it's creamy, it's comforting. This is like no other chicken skewer you have ever tasted.

They don't do a lot of fusion here, but they do have an Indian style Bao. This is like the Indian equivalent of a taco. You have that soft, squishy bun on the outside, and then it is packed and stacked with those beautiful Indian flavors. You can get chicken or paneer. This is the cheese version, the paneer version. It is soft, it is squishy. That is awesome.

Now check out the pomegranate paneer pakora, or PPP for short. I guess I could only compare this to an Indian style mozzarella stick. So on the inside you have this white Indian cheese. Then you also have a layer of potatoes in the middle, and then you dip it in their house made mint and tamarind sauce so you get crispy and cheesy and tangy and sweet, so many flavors in one little square bite.

The number one dish people will recommend is butter chicken. This is a really authentic Indian dish that they kind of take to the next level. I like to just spoon it over some of their nice, fluffy basmati rice. It's made with chicken thighs so that dark meat chicken just has a little bit more flavor and more tenderness, and then it's swimming in this beautiful sauce. It's very hearty, very rich, super creamy, and of course, you can scoop it up with a little bit of naan. Naan is basically a fresh flat bread that is cooked in the tandoor oven. So this is a traditional way of cooking Indian cuisine. It dates back 1000s of years. Butter makes everything taste better, but this butter chicken is off the charts, awesome.

Now let's talk about biryani. It's basically a beautifully fragrant rice dish with some meat in it. Tashan does what they call a Partha biryani. Partha means covered. It's like a combination of fried rice, a shepherd's pie and a pot pie, but with a flavor completely of its own. They actually make their own whole wheat dough fresh. They take that dough, throw it over the top of the rice, cook it up in the oven, they bring it out to the table, piping hot, and then they will surgically open up the top, revealing all that aromatic and delicious rice and the lamb inside.

This is one of the most popular dishes here, the goat cheese Kofta. Kofta is the Indian equivalent of a potato croquette. This is made with a mix of potato and goat cheese. It's crusted in some semolina and deep fried, and it's served swimming in this beautifully creamy sauce with some goat cheese on top. And this is a hearty, delicious meal. It's almost like the best mashed potatoes you've ever tasted, but fried and served with a delicious sauce. Count me in.

Here's a fun, interactive dish that you should definitely try. It's called Gol Guppa. So this is a little cup of semolina that is deep fried and sort of hollowed out like a shell. Inside, it's stuffed with some chickpeas and potatoes and a little date chutney. What makes it interactive is that it's served with a side of sweet and savory water. It's made with some Indian spices and little lentil dumplings. Then you just pour it right inside the cup. Shoot it. Whoa. That's crazy. Wow, it's a traditional Indian Street Food, and I can see why people love it so much. It's fun. It's super crispy, and it is a flavor explosion. Legitimately, it explodes in your mouth. You cannot help but smile and have fun when you eat one of those that is crazy, crazy, good.

Here's something I did not expect to find at an Indian restaurant. This smoked old fashioned. I love a nice old fashioned, but they take it to the next level by literally smoking it. They take the cocktail, put it in its own little enclosed glass box, then they infuse it with smoke. Comes out to the table. They open up the door and it is magical and delicious.

I've always said that real food lovers love Indian cuisine. So if you haven't had it recently, I'm telling you right now, go do it, and this is the place you want to do it, Tashan in Bedford, Massachusetts.