By Paul Reidinger

ORANGE WAS THE color uppermost in our thoughts when we swung into Tasty Curry recently for lunch. It's citrus season, of course, and the scent of oranges and grapefruit is, for some of us, as redolent of midwinter as the whiff of pine. It's also terror season – although nowadays, of course, every season is terror season in the "safer," if rubblier, world the president is busy taking credit for assembling, or disassembling – and on or about the day of our visit, the homeland security czar had jacked up the country from yellow alert to orange alert.

Orange! Does that mean we're supposed to panic, or prepare to panic, or go about our daily lives while panicking? We all know what red and yellow mean, from driver's ed and Captain Kirk's barkings on Star Trek ("Court Martial" turned on the difference between red alert and yellow alert), but orange is not really marked on the map of the states of unease. It is unexpected and discordant. So, for that matter, is the word homeland, which heretofore has been used to denote bleak little patches of land where dispossessed tribes and so forth were gathered so as not to inconvenience or embarrass the rest of us. Then there is defense, as in the Department of Defense, whose responsibilities seem not to include actually defending the country, or homeland, preoccupied as its wise overlords are with the prosecution of unprovoked wars against poor, weak countries far away.

I doubt that the kitchen at Tasty Curry (opened in September by Shami Haq, Shahid Paracha, and Mohammed Khan) meant to bang the orange drum quite so loudly in our tender lunchtime ears. Perhaps the parade of orange dishes, which left our table looking as if molten lava were flowing over it, had to do with our ordering both daal masala ($3.99) and chana masala ($3.99). Same price, same spicing ("Sindhi sauces"), same color of vivid rust. (The only difference was, of course, in the legumes, the former dish consisting of lentils, the latter of chickpeas.) That convergence we might have seen coming ... but the chicken vindaloo ($5.99), a leg cooked with chunks of potato, too?

Here I must pause to say everything, notwithstanding the pervasive orangeness, was satisfactory and satisfying, with the spices more precisely focused than the monotonic display of color might have suggested. The vindaloo, in particular, benefited from the mintiness of whole cardamom pods. And we did manage to order a few items that weren't orange: the immense, golden samosas ($2.99 for two), stuffed with spicy green lentils and cubed potatoes, and of course the desert-colored naan, disks the size of Boboli crusts served blistering hot from the oven. The regular naan ($1) is good for mopping up, but the onion naan ($1.99) is better, suitable both for mopping up and being eaten on its own. The gelatinous flecks of minced onion are, naturally, orange.

Tasty Curry bears certain resemblances to Chutney, in the Tendernob – emphasis on freshness and value, youth of clientele – but as physical artifacts the two restaurants are drastically dissimilar. Chutney, despite its cafeteria trappings, has a definite architectural flair, whereas T.C. is something of a cross between a college-town pub and the Korean barbecue that once dwelt in the space and whose exhaust hoods for tabletop grilling still protrude from the walls, like relics of some lost civilization. Is there a tandoori equivalent to the hibachi? If so, T.C. is infrastructurally set.

For dinner I was determined to order something I knew would not be orange, and that meant palak paneer ($4.99) – spinach cooked with cubes of white cheese. It was a reassuring forest green and nicely hopped up with cardamom pods. Also green: mater paneer ($4.99) – peas cooked with cubes of white cheese, but also with slices of softened onion and red bell pepper that seemed oddly reminiscent of ratatouille and also notably enhanced the natural sweetness of the peas. Possibly a bit too much so.

I wonder if it is possible to dislike chicken tikka masala ($4.99) or to make a bad one. Cubes of boneless breast meat in a velvety, spicy, if orangish, sauce ... what's not to like? (The English origin of the dish is said to involve ketchup, which would put it in currywurst country). Tasty Curry's version is spicier than most; it left a lingering fire on our lips.

Less spicy, but just splendid, was fish tandoori ($9.99), which I was leery of at least in part because it wasn't chicken tandoori. Indeed it wasn't, and if anything it was slightly better. The filets (of cod, I think), were firm and moist, and their mild flavor somehow stood up to the rigors of lemon, yogurt, garlic, and the high heat of the oven. Much easier to eat than tandoori chicken while being similar yet subtly different – not a substitute but quite worthy in its own right. Its color? Red. What else?