a real neighborhood gem featuring northern indian cusine, and also nepalese and tibetan cuisine. the place is on the corner of ventura and libbit, just a few doors down from benihana's and located inside a medical/ office building. park in the structure behind the building, and cut through the medical building lobby.
we came here on a saturday night and it was busy but not packed. i noticed many customers were indian decent, which imho is always good. we were warmly greeted and told to sit anywhere we wanted.
we started off with a nepalese dish, momo, which is a steamed chicken dumpling served with a spicy dipping sauce. the server said this dish takes about 10-15 minutes, as its steamed fresh. excellent starter and almost reminded me of a shanghainese dumpling.
for our entree, we went with
- the ever popular chicken tikka masala,
- the daal of the day (yellow daal)
- mushroom and peas.
the waitress said they ran out of mushrooms and offered to sub it with mixed vegetables (ie: zucchini, caulflower, carrots, etc.).
our dishes came out shortly after the momo, and they were decent size portions. we each received a bowl of rice (not just one to share). the tikka masala is still my favorite, and this one was excellent. the chicken was not overcooked, and were decent sized cubes of white meat, smothered in a pot of creamy masala sauce. i could have drank the bowl.
the daal and the mixed veggies were good, with an extremely good kick. i don't know which one was spicier but lucky for me, i had the rice to smother the heat, and i doused it with more tikka masala sauce.
if you check in on yelp, they offer a 15% discount, which brought our food and drinks down to $39. i'd come back here again to try some other items, especially a napalese or taibetan item. thumbs up!