Taurat Tandoori in Koreatown...The place is half halal meat market and half local hangout. Neighborhood kids wander in, turn on a Bollywood action movie, shoot some pool and argue about cars. Somebody you thought was a customer will get up from a meal and help bring out your food.The walls are painted a bright, fresh orange and covered with enormous butterflies. Some of the tables are underneath faux gazebos, and an arrangement of cut tree branches hangs from the ceiling, which suggests that you are not, in fact, in a strip mall but instead outdoors, at a Bangladeshi family garden party.There's only one copy of the menu, and it sometimes gets lost. You can order off it all day long; anything not already on the steam table gets made fresh.If it's your first time, ordering is easy: Get the goat. Goat is the heart of the Taurat experience -- the restaurant has some of the sweetest, most tender goat in town.Goat curry features big bone-in hunks of it, sitting in a bowl of glowing orange liquid. The liquid is the essence of goat, extracted into a buttery broth and mixed with a cardamom-intense spice paste. It's glorious; there are frequently cross-table fencing matches with hunks of fresh nan for the last savory driblet of goat sauce.Taurat may be a casual place, but owner Mohammed Hossain is fastidious, ensuring the freshness and quality of his meat by personally buying and slaughtering all his own goat, lamb and beef, to strict halal standards, meaning he follows the dietary practices required by Islamic law. The meat must be fresh, so Hossain makes regular trips to Fresno's stockyards. And it must be butchered properly, which is why he does it himself.Goat biryani is magical, a stripped-down dish of goat curry, rice and butter, melded into one. The taste of good butter permeates every bite. The addition of rice expands the goat flavor. Like a drop of water in a glass of bourbon, a little dilution opens up the intense, concentrated flavors and makes them bloom.Goat korma is the loveliest and quietest of the gang -- a lush curry, full of the gentle sweetness of fresh cream soaking into the delicious goat hunks. Little hidden sprinkles of fried, caramelized onion add a surprising bit of extra-sweet crunch to the lushness....
Do teh kids today even know what a broken record is?
What in the world is Jose doing up at this hour - did Monkey have a nightmare?der Brucer
*And Monkey doesn't have nightmares.
IT'S TOO DARN HOT TO SLEEP