Indian Punjabi Clay Oven
4055 Carling Ave., 613- 963-0625, indianclayoven.ca
Open: Monday to Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., 5 to 9:30 p.m., Saturday 5 to 9:30 p.m., Sunday 5 to 9 p.m.
Prices: main dishes $12.99 to $16.99
Access: no steps to front door or washrooms
The restaurant-heavy strip mall on Carling Avenue just east of March Road has seen plenty of turnover through the years.
The Iranian eatery that I liked closed, and was replaced by an Afghan place that I like. Last year, a place that served mediocre ramen and noodles was here for a few months, but now its successor serves pho. The mall’s Thai place has changed names, if not hands.
But the Indian Punjabi Clay Oven has had staying power. The family-run restaurant is the mall’s oldest eatery and has been in business for a dozen years, chef and owner S.S. Johal told me last week. In fragmented English, he added that he’d been cooking for almost another two decades before he opened his own restaurant.
This fall and in the past, I’ve tasted sturdily made, flavourful dishes from Johal — it’s just him and one other cook in the kitchen — that justify his eatery’s longevity, and I’ve met regulars who’ve vouched for dishes that keep them coming back.
Many come for well-packed take-out, preferring the comforts of home to the strip-mall resto’s ambiances. The Clay Oven’s front dining room’s walls mimic a village courtyard, although the low-level lighting and high ceilings with duct work mar the illusion. Further back, including the cash area, is a smaller, more spartan room of four tables. Johal says his Indian customers like the no-frills space for chatting and eating.
Casually attired service has been polite and attentive.
As per Johal’s Punjabi origins, his menu here stays within the range of Northern Indian-inspired dishes that typified Indian food when it emigrated to the United Kingdom and then North America. So, don’t come here for dosas or other South Indian specialties or any of the newer-to-Ottawa, Indo-Chinese Hakka dishes that have been showing up elsewhere. Instead, expect well-made items from the tandoor oven that gives the restaurant its name, as well as rich, heartily flavoured curries.
Among the Clay Oven’s starters, the mixed vegetable pakoras (chopped spinach, onion and cauliflower in a well-seasoned chickpea batter) were crisp, un-oily standouts. I tend to splurge on naan, and have enjoyed the garlicky and kashmiri versions. The latter flatbread, stuffed with chicken and bits of dried fruit, was novel to me.
Also from the tandoor, we’ve tried and enjoyed the tandoori sampler, with its mix of chicken pieces, boneless chicken, minced beef kabobs and shrimps.
The Clay Oven’s curries that we’ve sampled, in house and at home, have typically hit the mark. They’ve tasted fresh (Johal has shown me a pan of toasted spices from his oven) and the flavours and textures have won us over, especially when we’ve asked for the food to be more spice-forward. At the higher end, a serving chicken vindaloo was sharp and assertive, but otherwise, we’ve thoroughly enjoyed the balanced, warming glow of medium-spiced beef bhuna and chicken jalfrezi.
Bhindi Gosht, with its tender lamb pieces cooked with fresh okra, green peppers and onions, was an earthy, satisfying choice.
Butter chicken was thoroughly creamy and not overly tomatoe-y, with some complexity to its spicing and sufficient chunks of white meat. Even more rich was Johal’s version of baigan bharta, in which eggplant and onion were submerged in a thick, creamy sauce.
Other vegetable dishes — the perky cauliflower of alu gobhi, the simmered lentils of dal makni, chana masala’s chickpeas — were distinctively gravied and satisfying.
Sag paneer had mouth-feeling flavours, although my preference is for this dish’s spinach to be less manipulated and more intact. On one occasion here, the spinach was blended to the verge of glue-iness.
Basmati rice has been sufficiently fluffy and distinctly grained. Shrimp biryani, while a touch oily and teeming with wee, shy-of-flavour shrimp as well as the usual frozen vegetables, was redeemed by its spices.
Desserts here are made in-house. Gulab jamun (deep-fried and then syruped dough balls) were surprisingly light.
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