Taste of Bombay

Most kitchens within walking distance of the Niagara Falls hotel strip cook to a tourist's expectations. Taste of Bombay cooks to someone who knows the difference between butter chicken and Nihari — the Pakistani veal curry, simmered overnight over low heat until the spices go deep, that it files under Bombay's Specials rather than the standard curry lane. The give-away is how much of the menu lives on the Pakistani side of the kitchen — the simmered specials and long-cooked braises that take the better part of a day, and that reward a diner who came looking for them. The familiar Indian comfort food is here too, and done right, but the cooking that sets the kitchen apart is the part a visitor passing through rarely thinks to order.

The breadth is the first thing a newcomer notices. Butter Chicken anchors the comfort end — chicken and herbs in a creamy butter sauce, served with rice or naan — while the biryanis run three ways, Bombay-style basmati layered with spicy chicken, lamb, or vegetables. The Pakistani side carries the dishes worth a second trip: Haleem, a hot blend of nine lentils and meats tempered with spicy herbs; Chicken Karahi cooked fast in a wok until the sauce tightens; Seekh Kabob and Keema Mattar built on veal rather than the usual beef or lamb. From the tandoor come Chicken Tikka, Paneer Tikka, and Chicken Shashlik skewered with vegetables, with Garlic Naan or plain Tandoori Naan and roti to carry it all.

What the range says is that the kitchen refuses to choose between the familiar and the particular. A diner who wants nothing more than Chicken Tikka Masala and Garlic Naan gets exactly that, made properly. A diner who wants Sarson Ka Saag — rapini and spinach sharpened with green chillies, roasted garlic, and ginger — gets a dish most Niagara Falls menus do not bother to offer. The same breadth lets a single table split the difference on heat: Shahi Paneer and Butter Chicken stay mild and creamy on one end, while Chicken Karahi, Vindaloo, and the slow burn of Nihari hold the other. Vegetarians are not handed a single token plate, either — Paneer Tikka Masala, the black lentils of Daal Makhani, Chana Masala, and Aloo Gobi give a meat-free table as many real decisions as anyone else has. The menu reads as a kitchen that decided depth was worth the extra prep.

The menu is just as useful on an ordinary weeknight. A complete, inexpensive meal assembles without much effort — samosas or pakora to start, a biryani or curry over rice, naan, and a mango lassi — and a mixed-age table finds plenty of gentle options in Plain Boiled Rice, Tandoori Naan, and Gulab Jamun for dessert. The cooking travels, too: Taste of Bombay runs lunch and dinner and leans hard on carry out and catering, which matters in a stretch of the city built around hotels and motels along Lundy's Lane, where a good dinner often has to come back to where guests are staying rather than the other way around. A catered order builds itself from the menu's own logic — appetizers, one biryani, a rich curry, a vegetarian entree, and breads to round it out.

It has worked this stretch of Ferry Street since 2013, long enough in a tourist town to become the standing answer to a particular question: where a Niagara Falls table goes when the craving is for curry and biryani from a kitchen that takes the Pakistani half of its menu as seriously as the Indian. Whether the order goes to the dining room or out the door for a catering spread, the Nihari is still cooked overnight, low and slow — the same way it was the year the doors opened.