After doing a roundup of new Indian restaurants in the area last year, we decided to revisit Indeblue, 205 S. 13th St., to dig deeper into the menu.
The Gayborhood restaurant definitely nails the vibe to go with its exotic menu, as the restaurant is tastefully and spectacularly decorated in a sleek, modern Indian style.
Starting out, the dahi avocado chaat ($8) was surprisingly bright, a crispy ball of puffed puri stuffed with a cool and creamy filling of avocado, yogurt and red onion. Each puff presented on its own big spoon, which was a nice visual touch.
We sampled two entrees, one vegetarian and one carnivore. The vegetarian dish, chana masala ($14), was hearty, comforting and could easily make us forget our carnivore tendencies for a while. We get the feeling that they held back on the spicing on the lamb rogan josh ($19) for fear of scaring away customers with unadventurous palettes, but it was nothing the array of chutneys provided couldn’t fix. Otherwise, the meaty dish and the saffron rice it came with was immensely satisfying. If you do nothing else but sit at the bar and nosh on their excellent naan ($3) or garhwali (naan stuffed with spinach and mozzarella, $4) and listen to sitar and table music, you’ll reach a Zen-like state of happiness. But for true transcendent bliss, go directly to Indeblue’s dessert menu. We absolutely fell in love with the bananas nirvana the last time we visited and had to stab ourselves in the leg with a pen to keep ourselves from ordering it again. But this time we opted for the fig duo ($6) and, against all expectation, it was even better. The perfectly textured fig blondie would have been fine on its own, but it was topped with house-made fig ice cream and drizzled with honey, making it one of the best dessert experiences we’ve had in the city.
Indeblue definitely has enough style to pull people in off the street out of sheer curiosity, but it’s the food, with traditional and modern takes on Indian fare, that will keep people coming back.