Guide to Indian Food in Winter Park, FL: Best Dishes for Beginners

Park Avenue is a street of window displays and sidewalk tables, and somewhere in the middle of it is a menu that asks you to choose between korma and vindaloo with no explanation of either. Indian food in Winter Park is worth the trouble, but the first visit goes better with a translation. 

Tabla sits at 216 N Park Ave, Suite H, and this guide to Indian food covers what a first-timer should order there. Prices, heat levels, which bread does what, and the $14 route that lets you try six things before committing to anything. 

Quick Summary 

This guide to Indian food covers Tabla in Winter Park, on Park Avenue. The $14 weekday lunch platter includes soup, a samosa, an entree, naan, rice, dessert and a drink. Curries are $23, biryanis start at $20, and breads run $6 to $9. Butter chicken and korma are the two mildest first orders. 

Start Here: The $14 Route 

Nobody should spend $40 finding out whether they like Indian food. The weekday lunch platter at Tabla Winter Park is $14 and gives you six things instead of one, which is the whole problem solved in a single order. 

What the $14 platter includes: 

• Lemon coriander soup 

• A vegetable samosa 

• One entree you choose 

• Butter naan and jeera rice 

• Dessert 

• A fountain drink 

Served Monday to Friday. The vegetarian list runs seven entrees and the non-vegetarian six, and the price does not change whichever you pick. 

If you take one piece of advice from this guide to Indian food, take this one. Come at lunch on a weekday first, find the dish you liked, then come back for dinner and order it properly. 

The Dish Almost Everyone Orders First 

Butter chicken is the safe door into Indian food, and there is no shame in walking through it. At Tabla Winter Park it sits on the Indian Delicacy list at $23, tomato-heavy and mild, and it is the dish most likely to make a first-timer book a second visit. 

Tikka masala is its close cousin and sits on the curry list at $23. If you have had Indian food exactly once before, you have probably had one of these two. 

• Butter Chicken, $23. Mild, creamy, tomato forward. 

• Tikka Masala, $23. Similar territory, slightly more spiced. 

• Makhani, $23. The same butter and tomato base, built as a curry. 

Order it with plain naan at $6 and you have the most reliable plate of Indian food in Winter Park FL for under $30. 

A Guide to Indian Food Heat Levels, Korma to Vindaloo 

This is the real question behind most first orders, and the menu answers it if you know how to read it. Tabla's curry list at Winter Park runs all ten at $23, and they are not all the same temperature. 

Heat is adjustable, so say the level you want when you order rather than guessing from the name. A kitchen would much rather make it milder than watch you not finish it. 

Vegetarian Is the Default, Not the Afterthought 

Any guide to Indian food that treats vegetarian dishes as a footnote has it backwards. Most Indian menus are built vegetarian first, and at Tabla Winter Park the vegetarian half is the longer half, with twelve mains on the Indian Delicacy list alone. 

• Dal Tadka, $21. Lentils, the everyday one. Start here. 

• Dal Makhani, $21. Richer, slower cooked, black lentils. 

• Chana Masala, $21. Chickpeas in a tomato and onion base. 

• Aloo Gobi, $21. Potato and cauliflower, dry rather than saucy. 

• Malai Kofta, $22. Dumplings in a mild creamy sauce. 

• Paneer Khurchan, $23. Paneer with peppers and onion. 

Paneer is the one word worth learning before you go. It is a firm fresh cheese that holds its shape in a sauce, and it is the reason vegetarians do not feel short-changed at an Indian table. 

Order the dal makhani alongside something else. It is the dish that makes the rest of the table make sense. 

The Bread Situation, Explained 

Every guide to Indian food tells you to order naan and then stops there, which is where most people get stuck. Bread is not a side at an Indian meal, it is the cutlery. Tabla's Winter Park bread list runs $6 to $9 and a beginner only needs to understand three of them.

Start with garlic naan. Order one per person and a second for the table, because the first one goes faster than anyone expects.

If Curry Is Not Your Thing Yet

Some people need a side door, and Tabla Winter Park has one. The Asian entrees list is Indo-Chinese and Thai, fifteen dishes with twelve at $20 and three at $21, and it is the least intimidating page of the menu. 

• Indo Chinese Fried Rice, $20 

• Indian Chinese Hakka Noodles, $20 

• General TSO, $20 

• Pad Thai, $20 

• Thai Red, Green, Yellow or Massaman Curry, $20 

• Chilli Garlic, $21 

• Manchurian, $21 

Indo-Chinese is its own cuisine rather than a compromise. Hakka noodles with chilli garlic is a genuinely good order, and nobody at the table has to know it was the cautious one. 

Biryani, If You Want One Thing Instead of Four 

Ordering Indian food usually means assembling a meal from parts, and sometimes you do not want to assemble anything. Biryani is rice, spices and a protein cooked together in one pot, and at Tabla Winter Park it is the simplest complete order on the menu.

Add a raita at $4. It is a yogurt side, it cools the heat, and eating biryani without it is a choice you will not repeat.

Chaat, the Part of the Menu Nobody Explains 

This is the section a guide to Indian food usually skips, and it should not. Chaat is Indian street food, and it is where the first page of the menu stops making sense to a newcomer. At Tabla Winter Park it runs $9 to $12. 

• Bhalla Papdi Chaat, $9. Lentil dumplings, yogurt, chutney, crisp wafers. 

• Vegetable Samosa, $10. The pastry everyone already knows. 

• Samosa or Aloo Tikki Chaat, $10. The samosa, broken up and buried in yogurt and chutney. 

• Pani Poori, $12. Hollow crisp shells you fill with spiced water and eat whole. 

• Palak Chaat, $12. Fried spinach leaves under yogurt and chutney. 

Pani poori is the one to order if you want the table to pay attention. It arrives as a kit, you assemble each one, and you eat it in a single bite because the second bite does not exist. 

Building a First Order for Two 

Knowing the dishes is half of it. The other half is how many things to order, which is where most first tables get it wrong in one direction or the other. 

Two people at Tabla Winter Park want one curry, one vegetarian dish, bread, and something cooling. Not two curries. 

That feeds two comfortably with leftovers, and it covers the three textures an Indian meal is built on: something rich, something earthy, something cold. 

The cheaper version of the same lesson is two weekday lunch platters at $14 each, which comes to $28 and puts twelve separate things on the table. 

Dessert for Someone Who Has Never Had Any of This 

Indian dessert is sweeter than most people expect, and that is worth knowing before you order three of them. Tabla Winter Park runs desserts from $6 to $9, and two of them are built for beginners. 

The gulab jamun creme brulee at $7 is the crossover order. You know what creme brulee is, and gulab jamun is a warm milk dumpling in syrup, so the two together need no introduction. 

Finish with a masala chai at $5 rather than coffee. It is the correct ending and it costs less than dessert. 

Ordering From Tabla Winter Park 

Park Avenue parking is its own event, which makes ordering ahead the move more often than not. 

• Order online through Tabla Winter Park's ordering page and choose your pickup time 

• Pickup is the fastest route during the weekday lunch window 

• Dine in for a first visit, since the soup and appetizer on the lunch platter arrive in sequence 

Hours at Tabla Winter Park:

The weekday gap between 3 PM and 4 PM catches people out. An order placed for 4:05 PM beats arriving at 3:40 PM hopeful.