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Fearless Critic restaurant review
Austin
Food
Feel
Price
8.6
8.5
$25
Indian
Food cart

Hours
Sun 5:00pm–midnight
Tue–Thu 5:00pm–midnight
Fri–Sat 5:00pm–3:00am

Features Outdoor dining, veg-friendly
Bar BYO
Credit cards Visa, MC, AmEx

www.grajmahalcafe.com

Convention Center
91 Red River St.
Austin, TX
(512) 480-2255
G’Raj Mahal
The Spice Road meets Lady Bird Lake

If the Rainey ’hood has become the epicenter of excellent culinary adventures, G’raj Mahal was its founding father. This beguiling lot—whose gravel glitters with flecks of recycled glass, whose waving white canopy evokes a glamorized nomadic camp—is the reincarnation of our long-lost Austin, a place where weird obsessions make delightful bedfellows; in this case, Indian cooking and giant, light-up bicycle art. Think you and eight of your friends can ride a 40-foot glowing snake up and down the street after dinner in the Warehouse District? Maybe once upon a time.

The trailer’s tandoori oven sends aromas of paprika, ginger, cumin, and turmeric over often-large groups of diners sitting at shoved-together small tables. Servers do their best to keep up, although the kitchen flags. The wait for food often exceeds thirty minutes, but hey, you can BYOB (or sip on rosewater lassis). Best of all, they deliver to the neighboring bars.

It’s abundantly worthwhile, dish after dish of sharply focused and bright flavors. Rogan josh teeming with pink-middled lamb marries clove, cinnamon, and anise. A milky Kashmiri curry of apples, raisins, and cashews is amazing with ghee-slicked garlic naan. Pair fruit-and-nut-stuffed naan with Portuguese-influenced Goan dishes: rechad masala, plump shrimp with tomato, biting pepper, and flirty cardamom; sorpotel’s sweetly porky stew loves the minted sour snap of some raita. Then, ride that snake.