Bowl O Biryani

A buddy recommended this joint very highly. The name had me quite skeptical. I expected a Chipotle / NafNaf type mall version of Indo-Pak food. I was very wrong.

Fam in town from Da U.P. Two of them are very adventurous, but the others are very meat and taters types. We usually try to take them somewhere new if we can all agree on something. Last visit was KBBQ at Iron Age, and they loved it. This trip was Sun Wah (they loved it) and then, one very adventurous of the bunch suggested that he'd like to try Indian food. I laughed. I know the other less adventurous of the group would surely say, "never!" For some reason, they agreed. I grinned.

So next, the decision of take out or dine in, and everyone wanted "dine in" for the experience. Cool. Devon would have been a hike, and worth it for the option to stroll around, maybe to pop into Patel Bros, or a sweetshop, but it was cold and rainy. I suggested we pick a joint out west for parking and less traffic. I recalled having a very decent meal in a nice setting at Shikara, but I also recalled my buddy really hyping this Bowl O Biryani joint somewhere in Lombard or Downers Grove. I pinged him, and got a better description, "Full service. It's nice, I'd take a mom there." I looked online at the menu, and it didn't seem too crazy with high prices, or ghetto cheap, or fusion silly, just standard staple dishes. Let's do this!
So, it's in Downers Grove right smack dab in the middle of a super mally, and super restauranty area. It is basically sammiched betwixt a Red Lobster, an Olive Garden, a frickin Hooters, kind of in a mall restaurant complex, business complex area. It had to be some other PJ McTGIFuntimes type of place before. It's big, open, has a bar, seating areas that are up a few stairs off to the side, the mens potty was huge (we all laughed at how big it was. Very nice and clean, but big.)

The food kinda blew us away. Not sure if it was because we expected it to be mall-i-fied or not, but I will say this - it was really good, and not dumbed down.

Starters:
Onion Pakora - perfectly fried, not as spicy with heat as I would have liked. But the others liked it more for that reason.

Samosa - On the better side of the scale than average. Nicely spicy. This was the first gauge we could use to check if everyone was going to be "on board" with Indian spices. The two adventurous Yoopers were "all in." The others were lukewarm on these.

Gobi Manchurian - A little on the sticky/sweet side, imo, but also delivered a real hit of sizzle on the back end. One of the less adventurous was liking this FAR more than I thought they would, because they are generally averse to heat. We all really liked this - super crunchy and spicy, but I thought the sauce was a little too sticky-sweet. I'd easily order it again, tho.

Ok, so we employed our server to help us order for the table for the amount of food, and to guide us towards things the first timers might take to. I knew we wanted Butter Chicken, a Lamb dish, a Paneer dish, rice, and a buncha naans/parathas, but I was trying not to over-order which is my m.o.

Chicken Chettinad -
Our server suggested as an alternative to our request for Chicken Andhra, because he thought the Andhra would be too hot. I ruled out the blind request of Chicken Methi from the first timers, thinking it would be too strong of fenugreek. The Chicken Chettinad was fantastic, well received by everyone. It was MUCH deeper and dark than I anticipated it would be. Lots of curry leaf, and not a light flavor. Very deep and rich. The server, by the way, asked us how spicy we'd like each dish. We opted for "mild" on this one, and he said the Andhra base heat level would be medium.

Butter Chicken - You know what it is, and theirs was very good, but a little less over the top rich than a lot of places churn out.

Lamb Tikka Masala - same as the butter chicken - lamb was tender a.f. Everyone was loving on the lamb.

Palak Paneer - rich and buttery with some real good spice. It was far from 'plain.'

They had a list of different biryanis, like 10 of them. I asked our server to describe the differences so I could make an educated guess. We went with the House Special Chicken Biryani, and it was easily the best biryani I've ever had. By a mile. The rice mixture was perfect, and the chicken was luscious. It wasn't over the top spicy with heat, but it was well spiced, fragrant, rice was cooked perfectly - I hope it's just as good next time we go. I think their biryani selection and quality might just be the reason it's in their name.

Naan was standard, paratha was nicely chewy, but the truly flaky type - like pastry flaky, if you are familiar with that style. The outer crust of the paratha was super crunchy, like a French pastry almost. Less dense chewy tortilla like, and more flaky, dense pastry like. It was hard to break pieces of the paratha without having shards flying. I am in no means saying it was bad, it was very good, just hard to use a scooping vessel.

Immediately in our rotation for a meal if we are in that area of say, Oak Brook Mall, or that Dick's Sporting Goods, or the Oak Brook Costco. I can't really think of anything else in that entire area that I would rather have, and there's a lot of restaurants around there - many I've never been to, but what I'm getting at is the food we had was surprisingly good, far better than we expected for the area. Hope I'm not building it up too much for the next visit, but on the day we went, the kitchen was pumping out some fine examples.

https://bowlobiryani.com/
1211 Butterfield Rd
Downers Grove, IL 60515
(630) 541-3667

seebee wrote:A buddy recommended this joint very highly. The name had me quite skeptical. I expected a Chipotle / NafNaf type mall version of Indo-Pak food. I was very wrong.

I'd patronize the heck out of a Chipotle/NafNaf type Indo-Pak place. It ought to be the Next Big Thing but somehow nobody's broken into the big time. The closest thing is the Moti Indian Pizza places, which I'm very much enjoying, but isn't so much about wraps as I'd like to see.

JoelF wrote:

seebee wrote:A buddy recommended this joint very highly. The name had me quite skeptical. I expected a Chipotle / NafNaf type mall version of Indo-Pak food. I was very wrong.

I'd patronize the heck out of a Chipotle/NafNaf type Indo-Pak place. It ought to be the Next Big Thing but somehow nobody's broken into the big time. The closest thing is the Moti Indian Pizza places, which I'm very much enjoying, but isn't so much about wraps as I'd like to see.

Bombay Wraps Eats might be what you are looking for, although they only have three city locations and one suburban location opening this month.
https://www.bombayeats.com/

JoelF wrote:I'd patronize the heck out of a Chipotle/NafNaf type Indo-Pak place. It ought to be the Next Big Thing but somehow nobody's broken into the big time. The closest thing is the Moti Indian Pizza places, which I'm very much enjoying, but isn't so much about wraps as I'd like to see.

Naansense fits the bill. Only one location in the city - 178 N Franklin. When they had a spot on Clinton near Adams, it was in my lunch rotation.

http://www.eatnaansense.com