The first, second, third and fifty-fifth thing you need to know about Samudhra, an Indian restaurant in Franklin Park, New Jersey, is that they have a very strict dress code. This may well be the only thing you need to know about them; it is almost certainly the only thing you will remember about them. It’ll pop up as the first thing you see when you go to their website. You’ll be told about it when you call to make a reservation. When you arrive, you’ll see it posted prominently on the window of their foyer. When you go in, you’ll see it posted inside the foyer as well. And just in case you haven’t gotten the message, you’ll see it again before you’re walked to your table. “A lot of people have tried to come and eat here in pajamas and chappals or what?”, I asked the host; he smiled embarrassedly and then launched into a saga of how they’ve had to call the police on inappropriately dressed people. My friend and I looked dubiously at him and he petered off. Thankfully, there are no further reminders inside the restaurant.

When you go in you see why they’re doing all this drama. Their ambition is to be a premium restaurant and they don’t want their customers ruining it for them with their lack of fashion sense. Far more money has been spent on the decor and lighting here than ever will be at Kathiyawadi Kitchen. The effect is to produce a dark, orange-hued dining experience: the kind of milieu you presumably want when you’ve taken the effort to take off your joggers/sweatpants/pajamas/athletic tank tops/gym-wear/athletic-wear/sportswear/sleepwear and put on some pants.

We sat down at our table in the smaller of the two dining rooms—we were the first guests but they began to fill up pretty quickly after—and perused the QR menu (premium dining doesn’t yet extend to physical menus at Samudhra). This was a formality. We were after their lunch thalis as described on their website. My friend, a lifelong vegetarian, had her eyes on their veg thali ($22); and I had decided on their seafood thali ($26) over the non-veg thali: as “samudhra” means “ocean”, that seemed like a wise choice. Despite all the comedy of the dress code warnings, I was looking forward to the food. For one thing, my friend—who had not visited before (she normally wears only sweatpants)—had it recommended by desi friends and colleagues. For another, Indian food anywhere in New Jersey is a good bet. For a third, my lunch at Kathiyawadi Kitchen the previous day had been excellent. Then our food arrived. And it was just about okay.

There’s a lot of crossover between the thalis. You get the same pakoda, dal, rasam, chutney, curd and gulab jamun. Plus the same rice and breads (we both opted for the pooris, which came out unusually shaped). Each thali additionally has four more dishes. (The thali components are not fixed, by the way. Their QR menu now lists different dishes on them than we saw in late-April.) On the day, the veg thali included: a tamarind-based veg pulusu (this was quite tasty); a baingan masala (decent); shahi paneer (blah); and broccoli-cauliflower stir-fry (blah). The seafood thali’s four dishes meanwhile were: tomato fish curry (forgettable); kadhai shrimp (forgettable); egg masala (decent); chipotle fish (quite good). The triangular and heart-shaped pooris were fine. The gulab jamun was almost certainly out of a can. And no, I don’t know why a featured dish on the seafood thali was centered on egg.

Nothing was close to being bad: even the forgettable dishes were competently executed. But very little of it made much of an impression. The two exceptions were the veg pulusu and the chipotle fish fry—and these were the only dishes we asked for more of. It’s possible, I suppose that the thalis are the wrong play here—most people seemed to be ordering a la carte—but the ones we ate were not, at any rate, good advertisements for the a la carte menu.

For a look at the restaurant, its dress code warnings, and what we ate, click on an image below to launch a larger slideshow. The food photos are particularly bad: the lighting defeated my iPhone’s camera. Scroll down for more details and to see what’s coming next.

The two thalis together were $50. Add tax and tip and you’re looking at a total that does not in any way resemble a good deal for what it was. Service was fine—though god knows what would have befallen us if I had not convinced my friend Anjali to change out of her parrot green sweatpants and top. If you’ve eaten at Samudhra, please let me know if our experience was an outlier. As it is, I won’t be in a hurry to return on my next trip to New Jersey.

Alright, I hope to have another report from Seoul up tomorrow. Next week’s Twin Cities report will also be of lunch at an Indian restaurant and will also feature a thali. That’ll be on Tuesday.