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While we were traveling around India, we saw a copious amount of colors. Vivid hues of orange, hot pink and yellow can be seen everywhere, but the loveliest shades are natural. Rangoli India Restaurant in San Jose, California steals its name from a popular Asian art form known as rangoli. Rangoli is popular in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. Stunning patterns are made out of palettes that consist of simple materials like chalk, flowers, rice and sand.

Rangoli India Restaurant crafts its artwork in the form of tasty Indian dishes like piri-piri, chana masala, tandoori chicken and lamb vindaloo. Since Indian food can get quite spicy (a good thing in our book), we decided we’d start things off by cooling things down with a mango lassi.

Next up were potli samosas. The potli samosas are crunchy triangle pastry pyramids that are stuffed with sautéed potatoes and peas. Our four huge samosas were practically a full meal.

We ordered warm garlic naan to accompany our main dishes.

In addition to Rangoli India Restaurant, here’s a list of other neat little local spots we love across the Bay Area and Silicon Valley.

We tried Rangoli India Restaurant’s paneer khrai-wala which consisted of stir fried bell peppers, onion and a smelty farmers cheese sabji.

My favorite dish of the night was the aloo gobhi. The sauce was spicy making it the perfect match for the pan steamed cauliflower and the sautéed potatoes in the dish.

Since this was a marathon, and not a sprint of a dinner, we also tackled a generous helping of baingan bhartha. Baingan bhartha is a fantastic vegetarian dish consisting of tandoori smoked eggplant that is sautéed with green peas and then smashed. (Bhartha translates from Hindi to smashed or pureed.)

We rounded things out with a classic traditional yellow daal which happened to be Rangoli India Restaurant’s lentil of the day.

The dishes we indulged in at Rangoli India Restaurant are as close as we’ve come to authentic Indian food in Silicon Valley since we ate (I mean visited) India a few months ago. If you’re looking to spice up an evening or an afternoon, it’s worth menu surfing at Rangoli India Restaurant in San Jose.

Rangoli India Restaurant
Address: 3695 Union Avenue
San Jose, California 95124
Hours: Sunday Noon to 3:00pm and 5:00pm to 9:30pm, Monday Through Thursday 11:30am to 2:30pm and 5:00pm to 9:30pm, Friday 11:30am to 2:30pm and 5:00pm to 10:00pm, Saturday 5:00pm to 10:00pm
Phone: (408) 377-2222
Email: info@rangolica.com
Pricing (All in USD): Small Plates $2.00 to $11.00, Classic Dishes $11.00 to $22.00