Pistachio Naan, Bhabi’s Kitchen, Rogers Park, Chicago

Chicken Masala, Bhabi’s Kitchen, Rogers Park, Chicago

Colorful Dining Room at Bhabi’s Kitchen, Rogers Park, Chicago

This month Erin and Cinnamon and I went to dinner up in Cinnamon’s neighborhood, Rogers Park. Cinnamon recommended Bhabi’s Kitchen, an Indian restaurant that I’ve heard a lot about but had never visited. I was excited to try Bhabi’s, but also excited just to eat Indian food. I love it and don’t get to eat it much in Chicago. In New York the Indian restaurants were disbursed around the city everywhere. In Chicago there are only a few that come to mind that are not very far north on Devon Avenue. Guess what, though? Devon is not that far when you have a car!

We tried the pakoda (chickpea flour nuggets with onion, fenugreek and spices) as an appetizer. Bite-sized fried pieces with three different sauces. Yum! For my entree I got my old favorite, chicken masala (chicken with a special spicy gravy). I’m used to the dish being prepared with a cream like yogurt mixed in the sauce and with boneless chicken. Here the dish is more of a red sauce and with whole chicken pieces.. so not my favorite preparation, but I still enjoyed the taste of the sauce a lot. Erin loved the bagarey balgan (fresh Indian eggplant cooked with secret spices). I tried a bit and it was delicious. Cinnamon got the saag paneer (fresh spinach cooked with spices and cheese cubes). I’m not a huge fan of spinach cooked down, but I think if you’re a saag paneer fan you’d like this dish. I tried a bit and it was good.

I especially enjoyed Bhabi’s Kitchen’s unique selection of breads. According to this Smithsonian Magazine article, there are 20 varieties of bread made with six different flours. We tried the makal corn flour bread and the pistachio naan (with mixed dried fruits and sprinkled with powdered sugar). We ordered the pistachio bread off a recommendation Erin had read in that same article. It was so good I wanted to eat the entire thing myself! The bread was sweet enough to be a dessert, but I found that their entrees tended to be pretty spicy, so eating them with the sweet bread cut the heat a bit. I want to go back just to try all of the breads. I think I say that every single time I go out for Indian food. I’m in love even with the most basic naan.

As always, dinner with Erin and Cinnamon was great. I enjoy hanging out with the ladies and am very grateful we make the time to get together on a regular basis. Every single time, no matter what, we sit and talk and talk until the restaurant closes and we are forced to leave. We have to be some of the most well connected people online and we still find a million things to talk about when we meet up.

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