Mahan Brings the Flavors of India to Downtown Alhambra

NOW OPEN! 110 West Main Street Phone: (626) 458-6299 WEBSITE   Hours:  Lunch: Mon.-Sun: 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Dinner: Mon-Sun: 5 p.m.-10 p.m.

Alhambra may be the "Gateway to the San Gabriel Valley," but Mahan Indian Restaurant is the "Gateway to Healthy, Exotic Food of the East," offering such specialties as tandoori and lamb curry dishes, seafood and vegetarian plates, basmati rice platters, Indian bread, as well as traditional Indian sweets and desserts, and much more. Of course. no dish would be complete without Indian tea or the varied list of juices, wine and beer.

Many Alhambrans are familiar with Mahan's luncheon buffet, available Monday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. (for the bargain price of $8.99). The buffet incudes tandoori chicken, Chana Masala (garbanzo beans cooked in a special blend of spices), Daal Tadka (yellow lentils delicately spiced), Palak Paneer (cubes of Indian cottage cheese and spinach cooked in spices), and many other dishes - all labeled for your information.

Sunday's 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. brunch includes all of the above, plus champagne, for just $10.99.

Owner/chef Manjit Singh, along with his wife Jabbir and son Terry, are the main staff at Mahan's and Manjit, explaining the wide use of spices in Northern Indian Punjab-style cooking, said "it's colder up there than in the south, so we add more spices of warmth." You'll warm to this cooking in just one visit, and the wide variety of items available will provide you with the opportunity to make frequent return visits.

If you want to try a great menu at reasonable prices this is the place! Come imagine yourself in the place that Christopher Columbus was seeking when he accidentally stumbled on the American continent...and the images of a diverse and exciting land set to verse by a famous American author ...

"This is India!
The land of dreams and romance,
of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty,
of splendor and rags,
of palaces and hovels,
of famine and pestilence,
of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps,
of tigers and elephants,
the cobra and the jungle,
the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues,
of a thousand religions and two million gods,
cradle of the human race,
birthplace of human speech,
mother of history,
grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition,
whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations
-- the sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien persons,
for lettered and ignorent, wise and fool, rich and poor,
bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see,
and having seen once, by even a glimpse,
would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined.
Even now, after a lapse of a year, the delirium of those days
in Bombay has not left me and I hope it never will."

         Mark Twain (1835-1920)