The restaurant takes a refined, understated approach to traditional South Asian cuisine.
The smell of toasted spices -- cumin, turmeric, cloves, star anise -- is a heady welcome mat the moment you walk into Cross Culture, a family-run Indian restaurant in the heart of Haddonfield.
One of four Indian restaurants owned by brothers P.J. Singh and Monty Kainth, who also have Cross Cultures in Princeton, Lambertville and Doylestown, Pa., the Haddonfield restaurant takes a refined, understated approach to traditional South Asian cuisine. Popular for its lunch buffet ($9.95 from Tuesday to Friday, and $12.95 on Saturday and Sunday), Cross Culture deserves a visit for dinner when a la carte options abound.
With a fruity Vouvray on ice, a blessed benefit of dining at a South Jersey BYOB, we dove into a sea of gently spiced Indian comfort food, prepared with surprising delicacy and careful attention to detail. Despite an evening of uneven service -- at best, our server was sporadically attentive; at worst, she was nowhere to be found -- a feast of exotic flavors unfolded with hardly a hitch.
Although bold flavors are what I most associate with Indian food -- fiery chilies, assertive aromatics, fragrant herbs -- the kitchen at Cross Culture takes a measured approach designed to please palates with a more Western point of view. It worked for one of my dining pals, who had found Indian fare too in-your-face in the past. Cross Culture changed her mind for good.
The breads we sampled earned raves from the table; a buttery naan studded with garlic ($2.95) and paneer kulcha ($3.95), a pillow-soft slightly fermented flatbread stuffed with a mild fresh cheese, a cross between cottage cheese and ricotta.
Shrimp tandoori, served at Cross Culture in Haddonfield. We shared the generously portioned tandoori mixed grill ($21.95), savory morsels of marinated chicken, shrimp and fish flavored with plenty of ginger and garlic, and seared over charcoal in the traditional clay oven. Succulent and rosy red (a dash of food coloring never hurt anybody), the chicken was especially flavorful. The deep-fried vegetable samosas ($4.95) and mirch pakoras ($5.95), battered cheese-stuffed hot peppers, offered the usual guilty pleasure -- seriously, what doesn't taste better when you fry it? The fried bits went perfectly with sides of housemade raita ($1.95), a thick yogurt sauce rich with slivers of cucumber and mint, and sweet and spicy mango chutney ($2.50).
Indian food is notoriously vegetarian friendly, but meat eaters will swoon equally over the navratan korma ($14.95), a delectable assortment of nine vegetables and fruits, including green beans, carrots and golden raisins in a coconut and cashew-based cream sauce. We also made quick work of the malai kofta ($14.95), fried vegetable dumplings in a creamy sauce spiked with coriander.
Hands down, the crowd-pleaser was the chicken tikka masala ($17.95), yogurt-marinated chunks of chicken breast simmered in a rich onion, garlic and ginger-infused tomato cream sauce. The only dud of the evening was a nightly special, crab cake korma ($19.95), an idea that sounded good on paper until an over-sauced mushy mound of strongly flavored crab arrived. We took a pass and focused on cleaning the rest of our plates.
A shared kheer ($4.50), rice pudding with a hint of Indian spice, was a comforting postscript to a gently spiced evening in which heat took a backseat to flavor. Cross Culture lives up to its name, taking a measured East-meets-West approach to Indian cuisine guaranteed to bring new diners to the global table.
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