Ghareeb Nawaz

Last night, Alex and I ate at Ghareeb Nawaz at 2032 W. Devon Ave. It was a post-Indian-grocery-shopping excursion. I think we picked it because we were looking at a very short TimeOut Chicago list, and this seemed the most attractive. There's definitely a more extensive TOC list here that we should be sure to check out some restaurants on.

Still, it was incredibly delicious and incredibly cheap. I had the vegetarian thali, for $3.50. It came with rice, paratha (which didn't taste too different from when I made it for dinner with Josh Scodel, yay), and raita, which I think are three of my favorite foods. And then there was a sampler of four dishes. I'm going to have to guess what they were. There was definitely daal, which was really good, but still not quite what Lutful's mother makes. There was chana masala, I think--there was definitely a spicy and delicious chickpea dish. There was a spicy eggplant and tomato dish, which was also good, and there was a last thing too, which I'm forgetting entirely.

I don't remember what Alex had, but I do remember that it was $2 and he got naan for another 50 cents. It had the word spicy in the title, and was like a spicy lentil soup. It was really good with the naan. It came with raita as well (yay again). (Alex, if you remember any of these things, can you comment? This is why I actually have to write things that happened last night!) It was a good thing Alex was there, generally, because the portions were large, especially my thali. He ended up eating his dish plus like half of mine. As I said, the prices were really really good.

The restaurant itself was pretty spare. You ordered at a counter and ate at cafeteria-style booths. The walls were decorated with pictures of the hajj, so it's probably a fair bet that the owners were Pakistani.

The one other fantastic thing about last night's dinner was how excellent our timing was with the rain. It rained while we were in the restaurant and while we were on the El, but it barely rained on us!