By Ashwin Johri

The Richmond dining scene has recently welcomed a new Indian restaurant, Junoon, which opened four months ago. Junoon, a Hindi word meaning “passion,” is owned by Bachitar Singh, who has over 20 years of cooking experience at other restaurants and specializes in North Indian and Punjabi cuisine. This style of cooking comprises a majority of the menu items in the form of samosa and pakora appetizers, which are fried pastries filled with potato or meat, and an assortment of meat and vegetable curries as entreés, including the popular bright and acidic vindaloo curry and the spicy karahi curry, especially popular in western India. Singh parted ways with another local Indian restaurant during the pandemic and decided to open his own restaurant in August. He has had many challenges while opening an eatery during the pandemic, but he has been much more successful recently. Junoon has been providing takeout orders, in addition to a dining experience inside the restaurant.

The entreé that I ordered was chicken tikka masala, which consists of boneless chicken and a tomato-based curry. The multicultural origins of this food are very interesting. Chicken tikka, a traditional Indian dish, consists of boneless chicken marinated with yogurt and curry spices and grilled on skewers in a special metal or clay oven called a tandoor. The tandoor is a cylindrical oven widely used in India, Pakistan, and the Middle East. Chicken tikka masala is an adaptation of the chicken tikka dish immersed in a mild, creamy, sauce. 

Chicken tikka masala.

Chicken tikka masala is regarded as a primarily British dish; some believe that it was created by a Pakistani restaurant owner in the 1970s in Scotland, who added a tomato sauce to his chicken tikka dish to please a customer. Since then, chicken tikka masala has been voted as a national dish of Britain and serves as a prime example of fusion cuisine. Robin Cook, Britain’s foreign secretary in 2001, described the entreé as a “symbol of modern multicultural Britain.” The food has become one of the signature entreés in Indian cuisine worldwide.

Junoon’s chicken tikka masala displayed creamy, rich curry combined with soft and juicy chicken pieces. The sauce exhibited subtle hints of traditional Indian spices like cardamom, turmeric, chili powder, ginger, and coriander seeds that added to the complexity of the flavor and complemented the tomato and cream base. Finely crushed cashews made the texture of the curry thicker and richer. The chicken tikka masala was served with a crispy, buttery Indian bread, called naan, which is also cooked in a tandoor. The texture of the naan provided a contrast to the rich, smooth curry and soft chicken pieces.

I also ordered an Indian side dish, palak paneer, which is creamed spinach, seasoned with fried mustard seeds and chili flakes, with cubes of soft cottage cheese called paneer. The freshness of the spinach contrasted with the richness of the chicken tikka masala. I was surprised that the paneer did not melt in my mouth, as I expect cheese to do, and had absorbed the cream and spices from the spinach. I enjoyed pairing this dish with fragrant Basmati rice seasoned with cumin seeds and saffron, which is how it is traditionally eaten.

The rest of my family ordered a lamb rogan josh, a spicy curry traditional in Kashmir, the northernmost state of India. The lamb was succulent and tender, with the aroma of dried ratan jot, a plant from where the deep red color originates. The dish was spicy because of the liberal use of Kashmiri chilis and paired well with both the naan and the basmati rice. 

The COVID-19 pandemic hindered our ability to dine indoors at the restaurant, but when picking up my meal, the restaurant was clean, and the staff was enthusiastic and helpful. My family was excited to see an addition of a new Indian restaurant to the Richmond community and was impressed with the authenticity of the dishes we tried, where Singh’s culinary experience shone through. The menu had exhaustive choices and a variety of both vegetarian and nonvegetarian dishes that I look forward to trying in the future. Junoon provided me with a delicious authentic North Indian meal, and I recommend it to anyone looking to try Indian cuisine. 

All photos by Ashwin Johri.