Yikes!  I bet that place was run by non-Indians (Paks or Bangladeshi's!!).

Where I come from all the restaurants use quite a bit of oil.? The last few years I have been to the States and hardly any oil used and the taste, texture and end result has been very disappointing.? There are people on this forum who will always disagree to agree and we get nowhere.? This is because we are all from different places in the world and different regions of those countries. Just a thought.?

In the US, you wont find BIR style curries - I had never had anything like that until I came to the UK recently...in the US, we have authentic indian food since it is mostly indians that run the restaurants.

I grew up eating dal (lentils) 5 days a week....I have never had it in a BIR but I will try to help out with some of the questions involving basics of indian cooking.  About not seeing bits in the dal, I suggest using roasted ground cumin powder instead of the whole seeds.  it will give a better flavor than the whole seeds. Perhaps the smell is almost smoky!  And only use ground spices - turmeric will give an interesting flavor as someone mentioned earlier in this thread - too much can ruin the taste.  But as for smokiness, it must be from the flavored oil (reused oil)...I dont know of any spice in indian cooking (other than the roasted ground cumin) that can impart smokiness!
Hope this is of some help.
Payal

Yes, Ray is correct....MDH is a brand of spices and they have all the different spices plus many spice mixes.  They appear to be geared towards traditional cooking as ther eis a different spice mix for almost each popular dish!  I brought up the masala called "Kitchen King" by MDH as it is a blend of many spices (maybe 22 or so!) - maybe it can be used as a replacement for garam masala or curry masala - not sure - but I use it in almost all my traditional dishes.
I have found MDH spices to be very "fresh" as they are packaged in sealed foil bags inside the boxes.

Payal

Yes, I believe its oil - but i recall them putting water on the side that adheres to the tandoor.  I didnt have to oil the tava each time but it became messy with oil on both hands so I switched to flour - just a quick dip of the dough ball - once - and then i rolled it out - wasnt covered in flour when it was done.  My nans puffed up completely - dont know how to avoid it.
The nans were delicious!!!  I melted some unsalted butter and put some grated garlic in it and heated it for a minute on the stove....then painted this on the nans as they came out of the oven!!  Delicious!!