Southern Indian Flavors Come Alive At Golkonda

----------------------------------------------------------------- Restaurant review

XX 1/2 Golkonda, 15600 N.E. Eighth St., Crossroads Shopping Center, Bellevue. Southern Indian. ($$) Lunch ($6.95) 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Dinner ($9 to $15) 6 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Closed Monday. Beer, wine. Major credit cards. No smoking. Reservations: 649-0355. -----------------------------------------------------------------

It is one of the oldest cuisines on the planet and it is a kind of cultural jolt to find it in a Bellevue strip mall alongside a suburban shopping center.

Through the rain you smell the past. Curry leaves and tamarind, cardamom and coconut, mustard and mint and pepper.

Golkonda is a southern Indian restaurant, with a cooking style that evolved in and around Hyderabad. It's owned and run by Lakshma Reddy, who oversees the dining room and Usha Reddy, who supervises the kitchen.

"In the years when I was traveling," Usha said. "This was the kind of place, with the kind of food, I dreamed of."

I first met the Reddys seven years ago at a tiny mid-mall takeaway stand called the Bite of India. It's still there, in the middle of the Crossroads Mall food circus, thriving. The main attraction was a gargantuan rolled-up Indian crepe called a dosa.

In 1988, few in the Northwest (except for transplanted southern Indians) had ever heard of one. The Reddys have since sold 95,000 of the lightly fermented rice-lentil pancakes. They are wrapped around a half-dozen tantalizing fillings (try the onion-pepper masala).

Two months ago, the Reddys opened their first full-service restaurant. It's small, tasteful and both utilitarian and elegant.

Can't beat the buffet

The best introduction to the restaurant is the midday buffet ($6.95), an all-you-can-eat affair with several kinds of rice (basmati and jasmine in different combinations; plain, with yogurt or with lentils) three or four meat and vegetarian curries, a hot and spicy soup (a Rasam or a Sambar) and usually a warm South Indian dessert, Pala Payasam, made with grated carrots, vermicelli, milk, tapioca and cardamom. Sounds odd; tastes wonderful.

The seasonings, in general, are restrained. Even the dishes or condiments labeled as hot are bearable. "You do not need to be brave or afraid of it," the menu proclaims.

Utappam ($6.99) is a variety of unrolled dosa. The sourdough rice and daal batter is fried (much like an Ethiopian indira) to a golden bottom crust, then topped like a pizza, with finely chopped onion, jalapenos and black pepper. With it come two dipping chutneys.

Dosas are satisfying

The Dosas that established the Bite of India are on Golkanda's menu as well (from $6 to $8.49). Don't regard them as appetizers or snacks; they are substantial. Fillings range from a basic Onion-Jalapeno Pepper Sada Dosa, served with two chutneys and a hot soup, to the Andara Dosa, filled with mung beans and a potato-onion masala, with freshly chopped ginger, minced hot peppers and more onion. It comes with a coconut-peanut chutney, a ginger-tamarind chutney and a cup of Sambar, a fragrant Madrasi vegetable soup with lentils.

Seven appetizers ($3.50 to $7) lead off the menu. The Chicken Warangal ($5.49) is one of Usha Reddy's "home-made" specialties; the best appetizer I've had lately. Boneless chunks of chicken are dipped in a spiced batter made with chilies, mustard and curry leaves and then fried. They emerge deep-red, intensely savory and dramatically contrasted with a deep-green, cooling mint chutney.

Shari Kurma ($14.95), an enticing lamb curry, is based on a historic recipe from the Golkonda nabobs (the original royal family). Golkonda, incidentally, is the name of the ancient fort or palace. The curry is made in a somewhat soupy broth of yogurt, ginger and mixed spices; it's served with a basmati rice pilaf, paratha (a chewy flat bread) and a yogurt-cucumber raitha.

Three Hyderabadi Biryani ($11 to $13) are available: vegetable, chicken and lamb. We found them to be good, solid examples of Indian rice cookery but more substantial than compelling.

Thali dinners are a lower-cost ($9 to $13) dinner option: a choice of two curries (lamb, chicken or vegetable), including a rice pilaf, daal, roti, papadam and raitha.

The mango lassi ($2.49) is an ideal drink to go with all of it.

The Seattle area is becoming blessed with an increasing number of fine Indian restaurants (I regard Chutney's on lower Queen Anne to be the best of them). Golkonda is a welcome new addition to the South Asian mosaic. (Copyright, 1995, John Hinterberger. All rights reserved.) John Hinterberger, who writes the weekly restaurant review in Tempo and a Sunday food column in Pacific, visits restaurants anonymously and unannounced. He pays in full for all food, wines and services. Interviews of the restaurants' management and staff are done only after meals and services have been appraised. He does not accept invitations to evaluate restaurants.