India is a State of Mind (in the Courtyard of a Denton Gas Station)

By Rob Curran
One of the most pleasant Denton surprises in the 15 years I've lived here is the blossoming of the South Asian community. The Indian and Nepali communities have spread light and flowers during their festivals and, most excitingly for the Plate, filled downtown with spicy-food outlets.
Denton was always pretty diverse and spicy, but a surge in UNT enrollment from the subcontinent in recent years has made the town much more colorful -- and flavorful -- than when I arrived. Over the last half-decade, several excellent Indian restaurants and one store have opened up, as the Plate has documented. More recently, a fleet of Indian food trucks have joined them. One, the Golconda Express on Locust is so popular that, HottestPlate can report, it will soon have a full-time kitchen at the old Spiral Diner location on Hickory, near the train station.
Most colorful of all is the impromptu food-truck park in the gas-station courtyard at 601 Forth Worth Drive. This unique establishment may be to Denton's vibe what places like the strip of Tex-Mex beer gardens on Barton Springs Road long were to Austin's: a food destination that could only happen here. Weird quasi-industrial stuff has always been quintessential Denton, whether you're talking about the corn-kit tower or Industrial Street with its row of hip venues and restaurants in converted warehouses. Whether you’re talking rice-flour tacos at Viet Bites, Japanese pasta dishes at Keiichi, or quesadillas at the Mexorean food truck, quirky fusion is Denton’s palate.
The food-truck park offers a clash of Indian and others Southeast Asian flavors in the kind of brutalist North Texan gas station where Hank Hill might buy his gasoline. There are picnic tables with open slats at each end covered with woven bungee-type cords so you can sit in the lotus position and take your meal in traditional Indian style. The trucks we sampled included the nicely titled Tollywood Bites, closest to the street, and Desi Cravings.
Desi Cravings’ samosas are not, perhaps, as crisp as some I've tasted. They make up for it with their freshness, however. The batter tastes not just freshly fried but freshly created. And the fillings are equally fresh, with the potatoes hot but not burning.
Biryani is my favorite order at Namaste, one of the best Denton Indian restaurants. From the Desi Cravings food truck, the goat biryani was a slightly different experience, partly because there was only a modicum of (delicious) red sauce provided. I would recommend asking for two orders of the sauce. Biryani with sauce is a fun voyage of discovery, as you munch through the fluffy seasoned rice to find the patches of juicy meat and tongue-flaming sauce.
I went back less than a week later to have the goat again, but this time I also pilfered some of my daughter's order of Indo-Chinese noodles. These crossed over some of the nutty, pasty mouth feel of Pad Thai with some classic Thai crunchy bell peppers, and Indian-inflected chile flavors.
The perfect way to cool off after these tongue-torchers is, of course, a mango lassi. Sitting in the lotus position on the woven picnic table, sipping the greatest dessert drink known to mankind, smoother than a smoothie, creamier than ice cream, just the right amount of wrong and still, vaguely healthy, I felt as though I had realized my ambition to travel to India. And then a pickup truck the size of the Space Shuttle Columbia landed beside me and belched gasoline out of its frontal tail pipe into my face.
Welcome to Lil Ole India, Diiiinton.