Maharaja Cuisine of India

Maharaja is the Issaquah restaurant of a small Puget Sound group that has been cooking Northern Indian food since the early 1990s. The Seattle Times profiled it in October 1993, when Daljit S. Virk and Kuldip Sandhu, who goes by Kelly, were running a young operation out of Kent and had just opened a third room in Seattle. The paper described the kitchen's register as Punjabi, in the Mogul style, and noted that nothing on the menu then cost more than twelve dollars.

The cooking is the sort that rewards ordering across the menu rather than down one column: tandoor dishes off the clay oven, a long list of curries, biryanis, and breads baked fresh to order. Kelly Sandhu told the Times they minced their own garlic rather than buying it prepared, because "the taste is unmatched," which is a small detail that tells you where the kitchen's attention goes.

The Front Street room is open 10:30 AM to midnight every day, a genuinely unusual late window for Issaquah and worth knowing if you are coming off a trail or a show. Three sister restaurants operate in West Seattle, North Seattle and Kent.