Cross the damn bridge
Plume is the best Indian restaurant in Louisiana, and it isn't in Baton Rouge. It isn't even run by an Indian chef.
The Kabaraji Fish at Plume sits plumply on the plate, delicately fried fish within a breadcrumb-and-egg crust. It comes with a pungent hot mustard sauce meant for cautious dabbing—no more than you would use wasabi on tuna—and a purple Indian slaw, sweet and sharpened with a little vinegar.
You will not find this dish on any Indian restaurant menu in Baton Rouge.
You’ll have to drive to New Orleans, cross the “damn bridge,” as Plume’s T-shirts sarcastically urge you to do, and take a seat inside a pink-and-purple house decorated with hand-painted murals that reflect life in rural India.
The trip is worth it. Plume is, plainly, the best Indian restaurant in Louisiana. That includes the too-fashionable Saffron NOLA on the East Bank of the Mississippi.
Here's the other thing you won't find at Plume: an Indian chef tending naan at the tandoor. Merritt Coscia grew up eating Delhi's cuisine at an Indian friend's table in Washington, D.C. Her husband, Tyler Stuart, tasted Indian food for the first time when the couple spent months traveling India. They went, they explored, they learned, mastering the flavors and carrying them to New Orleans for diners willing to follow.
Their journeys show up on the menu. Most Indian restaurants pick a lane, usually the meat-heavy cooking of the north, with a couple of familiar southern dishes like dosas thrown in. Plume doesn't play favorites. The menu changes, specials come and go, and the range is the point.
There are naans, but also appam, a fermented rice and coconut bread. There is lassi, that familiar yogurt-and-fruit blend, but also limeade made with coconut milk. There is butter chicken, but there is also rista, lamb in saffron gravy from the mountains of Kashmir.
What many people drive for, though, is the Raj Kachori: a puffed bread shell packed with potatoes, cilantro-and-mint chutney, tamarind, yogurt and pomegranate seeds. It's Indian street food, made beautiful.
So go. Cross that damn bridge.
And before you leave, order a pistachio or mango kulfi, Indian ice cream that asks the chef to stir milk patiently over low heat until it condenses into something so rich it doesn't need cream.
