Quirky, locally beloved, and nationally famous Pakistani/Indian restaurant serves a fantastic pre-set lunch special.

6652 Southwest Fwy, Houston, TX 77074
(713) 532-2837
Website
11:30AM-10:00 PM, Tue-Thu; 11:30AM-11:00PM Fri-Sun; Closed Monday

Judging by its exterior, you would never guess Himalaya is a recipient of countless gushing reviews or one of America’s 38 essential restaurants of 2018. Occupying a strip mall on the westbound Southwest Freeway feeder road, along with approximately five other Indian restaurants, a sari shop, an urgent care clinic, a grocery store and other assorted businesses, Himalaya isn’t doing all that much to call attention to itself. Advertising chicken curry and biryani, a few window signs provide clues about the menu, and a bright neon sign announces “Lunch Special”: the object of our recent visit to this venerable anchor of Houston’s Mahatma Gandhi District.

As we walk in, we are confronted with something curious: food, but for another animal. A stack of bagged poultry feed sits by the front door. Is it for the chickens that will eventually make their way into a curry? The other thing that is difficult to ignore is that the place teems with midday diners, all eating from plastic trays similar to the ones used to serve school lunches. After promptly seating us at the only empty table, near the back, next to a large painting of a Mexican village scene that shares wall space with dozens of framed reviews and awards, a waiter hands us each an extensive menu. Along with traditional curries and biryanis, the menu intrigues us with various South Asian and US fusions, including crawfish masala étouffée, smoked brisket masala, and Pakistani-style pastrami. Items consumed by Anthony Bourdain during his visit for Parts Unknown are labeled “Bourdain” with a thumbs-up emoji. The menu is also peppered with rules seemingly calculated to enrage Yelpers: “during peak periods which are determined by the owner at his own discretion there is a minimum order of one entrée per person,” and “please add 99 cents/person for split checks.” We steer straight to “Sumptuous PRE-SET LUNCH SPECIAL (Changes every day) $13.75 (dine-in) great value – NO SHARING PLEASE $15.75 (take-out)” and prepare to continue to be amazed.

Lunch combo platter ($13.75): According to the menu, this platter includes boneless chicken and lamb curries, a grilled or dry appetizer, a dal or vegetable, steamed basmati rice, and naan. On this day, our lunch tray partitioned the promised chicken and lamb curries, baingan bharta (a mashed eggplant dish), a breaded and fried chicken leg, and—lucky lunchers that we were—a mass of biryani tangled with chunks of meat (at the time we suspected goat, but a glance at the menu later suggested mutton, maybe); accompanying the meal was an expansive naan with a surface so pocked and bubbly it resembled a satellite image of the atmosphere of some distant planet. Delicious and well-spiced, each item had a distinct flavor. Of all the offerings, the chicken curry stood out with its complex, earthy tones and perfume of cardamom. The lamb curry in a tomato-based gravy thickened with split lentils also made our heads nod up and down in affirmation, even if the occasional tough chunk of meat challenged our molars. The breaded chicken had a tangy flavor, especially when enhanced with a squeeze of lemon, and the eggplant dish, as the menu suggests, “very successfully competes with Baba Ghanouj, its Middle Eastern counter part.” All in all, this platter was a knockout; we left no morsel or saucy smear behind. And, as it turns out, the school lunch tray continues to do a great job of segregating dishes from one another, just like it kept our spaghetti out of the applesauce in more quotidian childhood cafeteria meals.

Vegetarian combo platter ($13.75): The veggie version also differed slightly from the menu, which indicates “paneer curry, vegetable of the day, dal or chana masala (our choice), steamed basmati rice, vegetable samosa & a special garlic nan.” In reality, what we received was the paneer curry, a (delicious) vegetarian biryani, the baingan bharta, bindhi masala (okra curry), three fried vegetarian croquettes (presumably filling the place of the samosa), and a garlic naan. The paneer curry—our favorite on this platter—had a fresh, bright, acidic, and quite spicy flavor. Also a winner, the bindhi masala (“even loved by people who don’t like okra”) consisted of soft-cooked, non-slimy, small okra in a lightly-spiced and tart sauce. The garlic naan knocked it out of the park; akin to the best garlic bread ever, it was so good we stopped using it to sop up sauce, preferring to not adulterate its butter and garlic flavor. The veggie platter’s only disappointment were the croquettes, which had nice crunchy texture but tasted like nothing discernible.

We were utterly charmed by Himalaya and found its cuisine to be a very solid cut above the run of the mill. We struggled to remember Indian meals eaten out that had flavors superior to Himalaya’s. And, of course, we loved the quirks because not only do they give us something to write about, but any crack in the fake-smile facade of late-stage capitalism brings us a bit of blessed relief in our daily lives. We’re already making plans to go back for dinner with friends and select some of the menu’s unique specialties.