By NIMMI RAGHUNATHAN
It’s a cauldron of contradictions. Fine dining that eschews pretentiousness; self-confessedly luxurious but affordable; Indian, except leaning international. Royal India works to challenge you and winds up satisfying you. Indian restaurateurs usually have an urgency about them. Looking busy, fielding calls and touting their food -
It’s a cauldron of contradictions. Fine dining that eschews pretentiousness; self-confessedly luxurious but affordable; Indian, except leaning international. Royal India works to challenge you and winds up satisfying you. Indian restaurateurs usually have an urgency about them. Looking busy, fielding calls and touting their food -

like detergent commercials that promise to get things cleaner all the time, till likely the clothes will vanish into the whiteness itself - they speak of their ‘specials,’ ‘trends,’ and grandiosely tell you that ‘no one else in the U.S. has the same dish.’ Here, Sam Kambo, merely shrugs his shoulders as you pore over the menu and look up not finding anything particularly intriguing.
“I have cooks not chefs,” says the owner, “I have a format and the kitchen works to make it happen.” His formula: freshness and measured recipes. Not for Kambo, the temporarily exciting and exotic dish but a steady and unbending focus on quality. The garam masala is born in his kitchen from freshly sourced and whole spices that are proportioned to his mother’s home recipe. Everything is cooked in desi ghee. The result is spectacular: even after lunching till you feel another forkful would make you explode, the familiar heaviness from eating SoCal Mughlai food is missing.
So, there is the home cooked goodness of the aloo-gobi with...
“I have cooks not chefs,” says the owner, “I have a format and the kitchen works to make it happen.” His formula: freshness and measured recipes. Not for Kambo, the temporarily exciting and exotic dish but a steady and unbending focus on quality. The garam masala is born in his kitchen from freshly sourced and whole spices that are proportioned to his mother’s home recipe. Everything is cooked in desi ghee. The result is spectacular: even after lunching till you feel another forkful would make you explode, the familiar heaviness from eating SoCal Mughlai food is missing.
So, there is the home cooked goodness of the aloo-gobi with...

strands of ginger and the cauliflower still retaining its shape and crunch. The butter tarka kofta where amazingly you can taste everything the sauce, the kofta arrives in, was tempered with. The stand out has to be the mango pineapple curry where bits of fruit are bathed in coconut sauce. Hot, sweet, tangy, the dish has its antecedents in Thai cuisine.
Kambo for all his effort can’t completely shake off affectation in his food! Clearly, he has his eye on other culinary traditions that Indians like and he has been quick to incorporate those flavors with some delightful results. The chicken lemon chili kabab that arrives as a sizzler and is polished off within minutes by the table, is clean, flaky, white meat. Here, the inspiration is Greek food – lemon and pepper to flavored on a bed of charred onions. There is a creamy chicken tikka in white wine that sounds like an Italian sauce, a Punjabi saag that has pureed broccoli, paneer smoked over mesquite…
This inclusiveness Kambo also brings to his customer relations. With a keen eye on business, he has opened the doors to the adjoining and well-appointed 350 capacity banquet hall for namaz, church services and BAPS congregations. The goodwill has resulted in a stream of customers from the communities.
The Royal India banquet hall and a second, smaller one of 2,000 sq ft, since their opening in 2014, has become a hub for San Diego’s Indian-American community with fundraisers and Indian bureaucrats and elected officials being hosted here. With its custom-look and options from Mexican, Italian and Mediterranean foods, Kambo says the hall is booked solid through the year with celebratory events like pre-wedding festivities and quinceaneras.
Many in the food business will tell you how after a long day they just prefer to go home to eat a simple dal. Kambo laughs that idea off. “My family and I eat here regularly because I know what’s in the food. There is nothing that we serve that we don’t eat ourselves.” Considering his wife Preet is a doctor from India, who for the sake of raising her two children and keeping up with her husband’s restaurant hours, works as a healthcare administrator instead, there might be some health guarantees in that!
With entrees hovering around the $20 mark, this large, airy and bright restaurant with spotless table linen, is definitely pricier than some others but also worth every spoonful you will greedily end up popping in.
Royal Banquet
8990 Miramar Road, #200, San Diego, CA 92126
858.457.9999 or royalbanquet.com
Full bar. Catering for 1,000 people. Licensed to cater in several San Diego area hotels.
THE STORY
Chandigarhian Sam Kambo is an engineer by training. While pursuing an MBA in SoCal, he chanced upon an opportunity to run a fast food outlet in La Jolla. This was in 1993. In four years, he opened a second Royal India Express outlet in SD as well as a fine dining one. The flagship Royal India Banquet-Miramar employs 22 people and he has 14 cooks who work for him.
Kambo for all his effort can’t completely shake off affectation in his food! Clearly, he has his eye on other culinary traditions that Indians like and he has been quick to incorporate those flavors with some delightful results. The chicken lemon chili kabab that arrives as a sizzler and is polished off within minutes by the table, is clean, flaky, white meat. Here, the inspiration is Greek food – lemon and pepper to flavored on a bed of charred onions. There is a creamy chicken tikka in white wine that sounds like an Italian sauce, a Punjabi saag that has pureed broccoli, paneer smoked over mesquite…
This inclusiveness Kambo also brings to his customer relations. With a keen eye on business, he has opened the doors to the adjoining and well-appointed 350 capacity banquet hall for namaz, church services and BAPS congregations. The goodwill has resulted in a stream of customers from the communities.
The Royal India banquet hall and a second, smaller one of 2,000 sq ft, since their opening in 2014, has become a hub for San Diego’s Indian-American community with fundraisers and Indian bureaucrats and elected officials being hosted here. With its custom-look and options from Mexican, Italian and Mediterranean foods, Kambo says the hall is booked solid through the year with celebratory events like pre-wedding festivities and quinceaneras.
Many in the food business will tell you how after a long day they just prefer to go home to eat a simple dal. Kambo laughs that idea off. “My family and I eat here regularly because I know what’s in the food. There is nothing that we serve that we don’t eat ourselves.” Considering his wife Preet is a doctor from India, who for the sake of raising her two children and keeping up with her husband’s restaurant hours, works as a healthcare administrator instead, there might be some health guarantees in that!
With entrees hovering around the $20 mark, this large, airy and bright restaurant with spotless table linen, is definitely pricier than some others but also worth every spoonful you will greedily end up popping in.
Royal Banquet
8990 Miramar Road, #200, San Diego, CA 92126
858.457.9999 or royalbanquet.com
Full bar. Catering for 1,000 people. Licensed to cater in several San Diego area hotels.
THE STORY
Chandigarhian Sam Kambo is an engineer by training. While pursuing an MBA in SoCal, he chanced upon an opportunity to run a fast food outlet in La Jolla. This was in 1993. In four years, he opened a second Royal India Express outlet in SD as well as a fine dining one. The flagship Royal India Banquet-Miramar employs 22 people and he has 14 cooks who work for him.