I had been curious about Junnoon, an attractively appointed Indian fusion joint in downtown Palo Alto, since it opened a few years ago. I hadn't gotten around to trying it out, in part because restaurants come and go so quickly in the high-rent zone of University Avenue that the public filters out a lot of the losers. You can't guarantee a restaurant will be good just because it stays open for a few years, but it's a good sign. Another good sign was that Esquire Magazine had rated the place one of the top 20 new restaurants of 2006.
Esquire wasn't the only outlet to give the place good marks, Junnoon's front window and website are plastered with positive reviews. It's suspicious however, that many of the better reviews are, like Esquire's, a few years old. Of course restaurants get reviewed more when they're new, but perhaps more recent reviews were less charitable.
Junoon certainly looks the part. The place is nicely appointed, and even the outside has been given significant decorative treatment. Lighting is low but not too low, the lobby area is comfortable and hip. They managed to successfully do what Xanh overreaches for; look hip while simultaneously making you feel hip for being there. Service was polite if hovering and nervous. We arrived late and the kitchen was closing not long after we were seated, which may be part of the reason the waitress was so excessively attentive. She wore the kind of expression that suggested she had seen a lot of nonplussed diners, and tried to make up for it with sheer force of servitude.
We ordered a mix of items to share, starting first with the Tapioca Fritters, Basil Malai Chicken Tikka, and the Tangy Semolina Shells. What was impressive about our appetizers was not that they were all bad, but that they were all bad in unique and different ways. Often a restaurant will fail in the same way on most dishes -- poorly cooked, badly seasoned, ill-conceived in general -- but Junnoon gave us three appetizers that managed to fail in three unique directions. The Chicken was undercooked, and had been cooked on too low of a heat, robbing it of any delicious browning on the outside, it was perched on a massively vinegary bit of salad greens whose only virtue was that they were effective for removing the taste of the Tangy Semolina Shells.
The aforementioned Semolina Shells were a dish that might have been tasty, if it had about five fewer ingredients. The shells themselves were light and airy, and the chickpeas in them seemed to be well cooked, though it was hard to tell what they tasted like under the layers of too strong sauce that irradicated any other flavor in the mouth. MCB compared them (accurately) to a seven-layer dip. My only quibble with that is that most seven-layer dips have more depth of flavor.
The Tapioca Fritters, rather than being underspiced or undercooked, were simply bad from start to finish. I cannot imagine how a chef would try them and consider them servable. They were fried adequately, and arrived fresh to our table, but the tapioca itself had received little to no flavoring, leaving it with a vaguely chlorinated taste. The potatoes were used almost as a binder mixed into the tapioca, and failed to improve the flavor. After one bite, I genuinely didn't want to finish it. The only saving grace was the Coconut Ginger Chutney that came with it, which was actually quite good. You will think I am being facetious if I say that it was like licking a pool filter, but that's more or less what the experience reminded me of.
Then followed the rest of our meal. Rice Flake Sea Bass, Lucknow Style Lamb, and Black Lentils along with some naan, two kinds of raita, and chutney. The Mint Raita was the best thing we got, and the Garlic Naan probably would have been good if they hadn't put the garlic on the outside, which resulted in acrid garlic. The Tamarind Chutney was unspectacular, but enjoyable. If the chef had devoted the same attention to the appetizers that she had to the sauces, the meal would have been significantly improved.
V advised against the Sea Bass, knowing that it would be frozen, and I will do him the courtesy of admitting here in public that he was completely right. The fish was soggy and flavorless, leaving the sauce to do all the work of flavoring the dish, a task it was not up to. I thought the crunchy rice flake on top was enjoyable, if a little coconut heavy, but the sauce was oversweet and completely without depth.
The Black Lentils were, while bad, at least bad in a fascinating way. I have no idea how they managed it, but they made an Indian lentil dish taste almost exactly like a bowl of badly-made black bean soup. Since I'm fond of Indian lentil preparations, this was particularly offensive.
The lamb was well prepared, tender and not overcooked as it so often is in this dish, but the biriyani was perfunctorily spiced, rendering it yet another dish with insufficient depth. One of the virtues of Indian food is that the flavor hits you in different ways at different times; first in the aroma, then in the first explosion on the tongue, then fully in the mouth, and then in the taste that lingers afterward. Nothing in the meal had this quality, but that was particularly noticeable in the biriyani, a dish which exemplifies these qualities when prepared correctly. Biriyani should make your mouth water when you smell it, and leave you hesitant to move on to the next dish for fear of losing the ghosts of flavor that still linger on your tongue.
None of the appetizers, especially the fritters and the semolina shells, should have made it past a trial. The Sea Bass and the Lucknow Lamb might be improved by a better cut of fish and some sharpening of the spices, but as they say, if my mother had wheels, she'd be a race car. Outside of some of the sauces, "salvageable" was as good as it got. Junnoon is the kind of place you take a business client for dinner when you want them to be impressed when they walk in, and completely forget about the food during the meal. It wouldn't be out of place in a mid-level hotel near an airport.
