Louisville, KYIndian

Robin Garr has kept coming back for more than a decade to a North Indian leaning kitchen on Shelbyville Road with a menu that runs to roughly one hundred and twenty items. His review is unusually direct about how much he likes it, which from a critic who has eaten everywhere in this city means something.

Open since 2008 and built on regional cooking from Chettinad, Andhra and Chennai rather than a generic pan Indian menu, which is why Robin Garr tells readers to nerd out on it. Ask the kitchen what it is proud of and order that instead of the dish you always order.

A Hyderabadi kitchen where the biryani is the reason to show up, and Robin Garr singles out the creamy coconut daal curry from the buffet line. It opened in 2021 and has held its ground on Shelbyville Road since, which in Louisville's crowded Indian corridor counts for a lot.

The chana masala is the plate Robin Garr flags in LEO's buffet roundup, a Northern Indian chickpea dish simmered long enough in garlic and ginger for the sauce to thicken on its own. The buffet is the low risk way in, but the kitchen cooks better when you order to order.

About two dozen chaats, the small plates of Indian street food, at what LEO calls the city's first restaurant built entirely around the format. It is vegetarian throughout, and the right approach is to order four or five things for the table rather than each person ordering an entree.