(Update: Jeet India moved from the reviewed location at 2632 Colonel Glenn Hwy to the other side of I-675 at 2750 N Fairfield Rd in Beavercreek. The overall experience is pretty much identical.)
And no rest for the weary. Coming back from Chicago, I immediately turned around and left on a work trip to Dayton. Dayton’s not a bad place. I particularly like the National Museum of the United States Air Force, since nothing like a few hours of looking at airplans like SR-71s to cheer you up (at least if you are an engineer like me). But, to be honest, Dayton is always a bit of a challenging culinary destination for me, primarily since I mostly seem to end up staying in suburbs like Beavercreek, and I’m really not into places like The Olive Garden. But it’s also not a culinary wasteland. I actually rather like The Pine Club, which is one of those olde schoole steak houses that still seems to be stuck at some point in the 1960s. And, as I mentioned before in my review of Maharajah of Dayton, thriving Indian community (primarily Punjabi), and as a result, quite a few decent Indian restaurants, although most of them seem to focus on buffets. But a few of them do indeed have some rather good food, and from two visits there, I can say that Jeet is one of the better ones.
Like most Indian places in the Dayton area, Jeet is located in a fairly generic strip mall. Like Maharajah, Jeet is a spacious and ornate Indian restaurant with a large dining room, but like Maharajah, it doesn’t seem to get a lot of mid-week dinner guests, since my coworker Jay and I were the only people there at 8pm on a Monday. Obvious their lunch specials are a stronger draw. But in Jeet’s case, the relatively empty restaurant meant for some attentive service, although I still wonder about the economics of the operation.
Menu wise, Jeet has your basic Northern Indian place, with your fairly usual mix of Punjabi dishes, and British and American of these, such as the classic Chicken Tikka Masala. Looking over the menu, I ended up finding that they had one of my favorite semi-rare non-traditional dishes: Chicken Tikka Saag, which is basically tandoori chicken served in a spicy spinach sauce, kind of a mix of two of my favorite dishes, Chicken Tikka Masala and Aloo Saag (potatoes and spinach). Ordering it up with a side of paratha bread, it took a little while for our order to get assembled, probably since we were the only people there.
Well, I know they didn’t just take some already-made bread and rewarm it, since the paratha bread was one of the stars of the meal. A nice dough with good wheat flavors, it was served up perfectly roasted with a really good crust and a nice scorch. A light dusting of butter and this was pretty much the definition of a good tandoor bread.
As far as the dish itself, I was quite pleased with it. The tandoori chicken in my dish was nicely roasted and had a good crisp on it, and hadn’t been sitting around, since it was still rather juicy and tender. The sauce was a nice, rich, and creamy spinach sauce, and the overall spicing level reminded me again that not everyplace is like my somewhat bland Upper Valley home; the “extra hot” spicing I ordered from Jeet came out… extra hot. A nice, bold, and pleasant change from the usual results I get from places.
Overall, I was rather pleased with Jeet, and I’ll give it a slight edge to Maharajah of Dayton. It’s good Indian food served up by a pleasant staff, and it will continue to be one of my Dayton go-to restaurants.
