Cumin

I was really excited to try Cumin, Bucktown's newest (and only) Nepalese/Indian restaurant. I've spent a lot of time in Bucktown and often thought that the only cuisine the neighborhood lacked was a good Indian option, so the stars seemed to be aligning perfectly. I also love what I've had of Nepalese food, which was admittedly limited to a meal at Chautara, a delicious little Nepalese restaurant up in Madison, WI. (If you are ever in Madison, pay this place a visit. Look, Yelp agrees it's worth it.)

I will start out by saying that the food at Cumin is pretty great. Everything we had (which actually ended up being more than we ordered) was good. But the service is very rough around the edges. Our server came to our table and greeted us with "Do you know what you'd like?" I mean, given that the restaurant is new to the 'hood and it specializes in Indian/Nepalese cuisine, which is a little more exotic than say, your average New American restaurant menu, it might have been helpful to have some sort of intro to what is a particularly robust menu. No such luck. And then she kept coming back and asking the same question as we worked to navigate the extensive menu. It was unprecedented hovering combined with very little actual assistance. We definitely felt rushed to order -- and it's not like the restaurant was crazy busy that night. There were no hordes of people (or any people, in fact) waiting for us to give up our table.

As we were deciding, we chomped on something sort of similar to Indian chips and salsa. Only the chips are a different, more delicate texture and they have some sort of seed/herb in them. And they're served with three different sauces. The green one on the left is savory and a little spicy; the dark purple/brown sauce was sweet but complex; and the marmalade-like sauce on the right that was pretty much straight up sweet.


We ordered a bottle of wine to start, as well as some of the Lamb Keema Samosas and the Paneerka Naram Garam Pakora. Samosas are traditional Indian appetizers that are deep-fried pastries filled with a meat and/or veggie filling. In this case, the filling was supposed to be "minced lamb in a flavorful spice blend." Paneer is an Indian cheese that is somewhat similar to cottage cheese. In the Paneerka Naram Garam Pakora, paneer is mixed with chopped onion, bell peppers, cilantro and seasoned mashed potatoes, rolled in chickpea flower and deep fried.

Our server stumbled a bit through the wine service, which is totally fine since really, there doesn't need to be a ton of (read:any) pomp and circumstance around a $20-something bottle of Pinot Grigio. But then our appetizers came out and the one that they placed in front of Jenny and Elizabeth was unidentifiable, and it didn't look like we thought it would. (Fried balls of Indian cheese.) There were some fried lumps we thought might be vegetables, but since both Elizabeth and Jenny are vegetarians, we wanted to be sure.


At this point, our previously ever-present server was nowhere to be found. The other server who dropped the appetizers off was unable to tell us if they were what we ordered. Language was a bit of a barrier here. That's good because the place seems authentic, but bad because we couldn't confirm what was on the table. Though he couldn't tell us if the appetizer contained paneer, he could tell us that it was vegetarian. We decided to try to find our server before taking the plunge. When she did make it back to our table, we learned that this appetizer (while the lumps were in fact meat-free) was not actually the one we ordered. The waitress was nice and said that we wouldn't be charged for it. And in the end, our veggie friends liked the fried vegetable app just fine.

The samosas looked tasty, but when we broke into them, we discovered that they were the vegetarian version instead of the lamb. We were a little disappointed because we'd thought that the lamb samosas sounded interesting and we'd never had them before, but no big deal. We like veggie samosas. And they were tasty. The filling was soft and flavorful and the exterior was crisp without a ton of residual grease from their bath in the deep fryer. Delicious.

After perusing the menu, we were thrilled to discover they have sesame naan, which none of us had ever tried before. We got an order of the sesame naan and the garlic naan, which is pretty much a staple when this group hits up an Indian place. Both types made it to our table, which was great, and they were tasty. But I have to say that I think Veerasway's naan is better.


Jenny decided to try a Nepalese dish and ordered the Parvate Aaalu Tama Ra Bodi, which is potatoes, bamboo shoots and black eyed peas in "delectable Nepalese spices." According to the menu, this is a delicacy from the mountainous region of Nepal -- and Jenny really liked it. I'm not a huge fan of black eyed peas, so it was a little harder sell for me personally -- but I do feel that the dish was well-balanced and well-executed over all.


I ordered the Chicken Sahi Korma, which is chicken cooked in an almond-cashew curry sauce. It was pretty damn awesome. The sauce was rich and savory. The chicken itself was decent, but the sauce is definitely what makes this dish.


Elizabeth ordered the Navaratan Korma, which is is nine (!) assorted vegetables in the same amazing almond-cashew curry sauce. I actually preferred her dish to mine because I thought that the flavors of the vegetables added greater complexity to the dish than the chicken did. This would be the dish I'd recommend ordering -- if you're not intimidated by the thought of nine different veggies in one dish. Personally, I thought it worked beautifully.


Annie got the Fish Tikka Masala, aka Mahi Mahi in a mildly spicy creamy tomato sauce. Allegedly the fish was sauteed with some diced bell peppers and onions, but they were pretty undectectable. (Except for that one sticking out in the picture below. I think that might have been the only bell pepper in the dish.) The Mahi Mahi is an interesting take on the ever popular Indian gateway dish, Chicken Tikka Masala. I personally didn't love the combo of fish with Tikka Masala, but it was decent. And the fish was cooked very well. Again, a well-executed dish, but I'd go for the Chicken Tikka -- especially if you haven't eaten a lot of Indian in the past.


Overall, Cumin has some solid Indian and Nepalese cuisine. I don't think I'd make a point to eat in again, but this place would be great for take-out. And it's new, so the service may improve. They weren't rude -- they just seemed confused and perhaps inexperienced, which means that things could change for the better with time.

It's not my favorite restaurant in a neighborhood that has a lot of great ones, but it's a good Indian option in a hood that didn't have any Indian at all before. Give Cumin a whirl and let me know what you think.