Akbar Cuisine of India

Akbar takes Indian food to a slightly different level. While they offer favorite standards like chicken tikka masala and lamb vindaloo, they also offer invigorating twists like pepper lamb and a dish I can't remember, but it was lamb simmered in a lemon sauce.

If you're image of an Indian restaurant is smudged tablecloths, stark surroundings, cracked pictures of the Taj Majal and devoid of any other human life, you'll like the lively atmosphere of Akbar. I think they were the first to catch on that Indian food shouldn't be relegated to semi-fast food and pitiful surroundings. While the space isn't luxurious, it makes a good effort at pulling Indian into a decent, modern style.

I'd like to tell you about the pepper lamb, since I seem to be the only person to enjoy it, or perhaps, ever eaten it. It is so hot, the waiter will profoundly disapprove, and employing the Rabbinical tradition of conversion to Judism, will try to talk you out of it at least three times.

Let him. The dish is not for you. It is for me. Eating the pepper lamb is like eating a live dragon dredged through the surface of the sun. It is hotter than Christina Aguilera's ass. It is sadism manifested on a plate, masochism for the consumer who enjoys it. As I say, Taste The Pain. It is a sucker punch of fresh simmered lamb, generously coated in a sauce prepared with five different types of peppers. Most people just taste the pain, but I can pick off the subtle differences in the peppers, some thai chilies, a bit of jalapeno, some green peppercorns. It is a spiked boot kick to the groin and a searing hot rite of passage. I've eaten a lot of hot, and I've never eaten anything hotter. I don't usually like hot for hot's sake, but I really find the sauce refreshing and flavorful. You will not. Heed the waiter's advice if you're stupid enough to try to impress your date by ordering it.

I commend them for offering it, though, it takes a lot of guts to put something on the menu you have no intention of anyone realistically ordering.

The naan bread is generous and flavorful. Their chutneys are spiked with exotic flavors. The samosas are dense and qualify as their own meal.

The flavors here are mature and complex, yet this is an Indian restaurant, so they don't hold back on the curry, and they don't Americanize it. They merely accentuate an already good thing. So far, Akbar is the best Indian food I've had in the city.