My fiance and I have been meaning to go to Kama for a while now. They have one in LaGrange Park where we live, so we made reservations for Valentine's Day.
Before dinner we had hoped to go to a local metaphysical store but saw they were closed Sundays. Instead we wound up wandering LaGrange and driving around Hinsdale, looking at beautiful houses we'll probably never be able to afford. Oh well. If I had that kind of money I probably wouldn't spend it on a house anyway.
When we got to the restaurant it was dimly lit and beautifully decorated. It was minimalist and didn't really have an Indian feel to it at all, and in fact I didn't see any Indian people working there. Service was excellent and kind, a little bit slow but in a relaxed way.
Part of the reason we chose Kama was because they have a lot of vegan options and mark them on the menu. Vegan items are marked with VG and items that can be made vegan are marked with VGO. I'm vegan; he's a meat eater who hates pickles and mint. We both found plenty of options and I had a tough time making up my mind.
We started with pear cider. I got crispy potato fingers as an appetizer, which came with a spicy chili sauce. It was really good, though my fiance pointed out the potatoes were like steak fries. He got samosas with the vegan option, which I think just means they brought a tamarind chutney and a mint chutney instead of a yogurt-based one. We shared and it was awesome. At this point I already knew I wasn't going to finish my dinner.
Next we both got mulligatawny soup. The only other soup option was lobster bisque. It was a really tasty pureed soup with a strong taste of black pepper and a garnish of jasmine rice that I at first feared was cheese shreds.
For the main course I chose their version of chana masala. I wrestled with that because I get chana masala all the time. On the one hand, that means I obviously love it. On the other hand, I wanted to try something new. But it really did seem like the best thing on the menu and the waitress recommended it, so I consoled myself with the knowledge that my soup, appetizer, and bread were new. The bread I got was a spicy chili paratha. The vegan option was to remove the butter, so it was a bit drier than it might have been but wonderfully spicy. My fiance got tikka masala made with chickens. I've yet to encounter a vegan version, maybe tofu tikka masala. Yeah I know, tofu is east Asian. During the course of the meal, maybe around 5:30 pm, they dimmed the lights further.
It was a little pricier than I could handle on a weekly or even monthly basis, about $40 each before tip, but a great place for a fancy date night. It was just the right balance of quiet and noisy. We had a really good time and then went to see Zoolander 2, because this is what romance is made of. My fiance is really, really ridiculously good looking.
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