- Michael Gebert
- Decor from the ceiling, spices on the wall at Marigold Maison in Bannockburn
Considering how alien Indian food must have seemed at first to, well, anybody from any other food culture in America, the ubiquitous Indian buffet is a stroke of marketing genius in terms of gaining early acceptance and making the food accessible. But the buffets’ interchangeable dishes of brightly colored gravies made it unnecessary to ever actually learn anything about the cuisine. At least, that’s kind of the story of the mom-and-pop joints in the city, but as Mike Sula has chronicled more than a few times, the real action in Indian food in Chicago these days is in the ‘burbs, where money is being thrown around by western-educated, often second-generation South Asians who want to raise their own cuisine to a higher level of sophistication.
- Michael Gebert
- Chef Sunil Kumar in front of his photos
At one point, Kumar owned five Indian restaurants in and around Mystic, Connecticut. “I was the mom-and-pop then,” he says, and he learned cooking from his family in India. “I learned a lot of cooking from my family members, and my mom, she is a very talented cook. When I look back, I’m doing the same as her, taking a few spices, roasting it, blending them and then adding into the dish. That’s always in the back of my mind.” Some of the dishes, particularly the vegetarian ones, are refined versions of things his mother made when he was growing up: “The saag paneer [stewed spinach and greens with cheese] is a very familiar dish. Wherever you go in the Punjab, they have a saag. That recipe is according to her. Dal makhani [lentil stew], whenever you go to the temple, they have dal makhani. It’s like a pasilla, it takes 18 to 20 hours to cook that. And the eggplant, that comes from my family.”
Marigold Maison, 2535 Waukegan Road, Bannockburn; 847-940-0200.
Making fresh Indian food at Marigold Maison
At an upscale Indian restaurant from the owner of Roka Akor, Indian food gets new respect in the kitchen.
