Indian Oven

My fallback vegetarian cuisine is always Indian. Sure, many other cuisines offer tons of options for veggies, but India will always remain first in my heart. Indian Oven, near Downtown Columbus, is another in a long line of Indian restaurants to maintain my longstanding love affair with food from the Indian subcontinent.

Indian Oven features sleek modern decor contrasted by classic Indian cooking. Most of the menu consists of Indian dishes that are found in most other restaurants (e.g. samosas, naan, matar paneer, chana masala, et al.), as well as a few specialties that are slightly less run-of-the-mill.

There are both lunch and dinner menus. The samosas came with a dollop of mint chutney. They were crispy, moderately spiced and delicious. They were very good. Samosas are always good, but at Indian Oven they are a step better.

The naan was fair to middling. The texture was pleasant, but the flavor was hardly delicious, even alongside the other fine items. The caveat is that I took the naan to go. It may not travel well. The bread was adequate, but hardly spectacular.

My entree was the shahi paneer. It was cheese cubes in a tomato and onion sauce with nuts and assorted spices. I ordered it hot, but the dish is mild, so it came out rich and faintly spicy. The nut vegetable sauce was delicious, and I'm a sucker for paneer, so this was definitely a winner.

There is an assortment of vegetarian items that are all marked in a specific part of the menu, as well as a number of other items in other sections that are also vegetarian. This is a great vegetarian option Downtown whether you are eating dine-in or take-out.

Indian Oven