Depending on how you look at things, there is, for the most part, only one Indian restaurant in Minneapolis. It has different owners, and goes by different names (Taste of India, India Palace, etc.) but it generally serves the same dishes in the same way. You've got your chicken, beef, or lamb options for your vindaloo, korma, and tikka masala. And it's decent food, but there's nothing particularly inspiring about it.

Which is why I hold the few Indian restaurants in town that aren't The Official Indian Restaurant in high esteem. One of them is Nalapak, which distinguishes itself by being vegetarian, and one of them is Kabobs, which distinguishes itself by being Hyderabadi and also by being fairly awesome.

I say fairly, because I've only been there twice on account of it being way the fuck out of my way in either Bloomington or Maple Grove. The first time I was there, the samosas were mind-blowing. Pyramids of potato filling wrapped in a dough that was so crisp it was flaky. The second time, the filling was still good, but the outside wasn't as crisp - much more like a usual samosa.

They do not ask you how hot you want your dish at Kabobs. The dishes are as hot as they are, and that's usually pretty hot. There's the Chicken 65, for example, which is just chicken and chili and other seasonings that don't tame the heat so much as guide it toward even more flavor. It's one of the few dishes that I will willingly eat again even after it's burned my candle at both ends. It's that good.

This past weekend, though, I went for the goat biryani. Now, I almost never order biryani. I don't know why, but I just don't.  But they biryani at Kabobs is something else. Super-light, and full of so much aromatic spice that you think it's being pumped in from some outside source.  The rice was heaped over spicey stewed goat, clearly hacked into chunks bone and all. If you don't like picking bone chunks out of your rice, get some other meat, but man, was it good. I'm not sure why there are raw onions on top of it, though. Those did nothing for me, and I don't have a problem with raw onions normally.

The naan is like the samosas - it ranges from better-than average all the way up to "if this is naan, what the fuck were those other places serving" levels of good.

Also, I don't know about the Maple Grove loacation, but in Bloomington, there is almost no dining space and even less ambience. It does a lot of takeout. It has a lunch buffet, but luckily, when they're doing the lunch buffet, you can also order off the menu, which I prefer here.

I've had friends tell me they didn't like Kabobs, which may be the consistency problem or may just confuse the living fuck out of me. Or maybe I just give it bonus points for being different, which is still rarer than it could be in the Twin Cities.