Review: Bukhara Grille

But the beat is useless. Service is slow and inattentive. You must prompt and prod, sometimes through vigorous flailing, for drinks—such as the spectacularly rich and smooth mango lassi—and entrees and dinner checks. But the greeting is fine. It begins with papadam (thin cracker flatbread) served with metal dishes of mint and sweet-sour tamarind sauce along with a salad composed of carrot planks soaked in lemon and ground mustard and leathery green chilies defanged in ice water laced with salt and turmeric. Ice water is poured in metal cups sleeved in pounded copper and somehow tastes as silty as catfish.

Tandoor naan, the Indian flatbread baked in a tandoor oven, can be moist and fluffy or scorched and brittle. But whatever the texture, it's fantastic to drag through the rich slurries soaking the grilled shrimp or the lentils or especially the nafeez palak (Bukhara's version of sag paneer), a dish of warm pulverized spinach spiced with cumin and garlic swamping spongy cubes of house-made cheese.

Mint salmon tikka, meticulous cubes of fish as dark as heavily tarnished bronze, is mush, fraying into soggy shreds instead of breaking away in rich, distinct flakes.

Lamb kebabs, juicy chunks of raciness, are slathered in a spice blend so complex and gently potent that it jams your sense of culinary discernment. Bronzed buttons of ground lamb and lentil—four of them, on a bed of shredded cabbage and carrot interspersed with shards of green bell pepper—are brittle crisp and break open to expose spongy cores of steaming fume.

Stepping down from this sensual fusillade can be daunting. Do so with mango lassi or rasmalai, house-made cheese patties soaked in saffron cream. Sadhu plans more Bukharas for the Park Cites and Plano, which could sink coffin nails in Dallas' traditional Indian travesty. For good.

Bukhara Grille, 955 E. Campbell Road, Richardson,972-437-1519. Open 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m., noon-3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday;5 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; and 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. $$