If you’re familiar with the terrain of Artesia’s Little India, you’d know that Wok N Tandoor is the reincarnation of an Indian-Chinese-Thai restaurant called Tangy Tomato. Tangy Tomato changed its name to Wok N Tandoor about three years ago and moved from one block of Pioneer to another.
Now Wok N Tandoor is expanding outside of the Indian enclave and into our neck of the woods. It has taken up the space of the former Tito’s La Familia at 1948 N Tustin St. in Orange.
As the name would suggest, Wok N Tandoor specializes in Indo-Chinese specialities such as chicken Manchurian, Hakka noodles, and a dish it calls “Chicken Lollipops”, which are crispy battered chicken wings coated with a Sichuan-style sauce.
But if you look at the restaurant’s Instagram feed, you also notice that Wok N Tandoor is not above fusing the Indian flavors with Italian and whatever else. There’s a picture of a paneer tikka pizza as well as a plate of fries covered with chutneys that looks like the lovechild of poutine and chaat.
Before becoming an award-winning restaurant critic for OC Weekly in 2007, Edwin Goei went by the alias “elmomonster” on his blog Monster Munching, in which he once wrote a whole review in haiku.