Although there are several good Indian restaurants in Madison, there are few to none where I actually want to sit down and enjoy a meal. So I do take out.
Dhaba is the exception with its wide open windows and floor plan, and overall pleasing ambience. Plus the food was excellent.
The veg samosa was perfectly cooked, and even reheated beautifully in the oven the next evening. The crust is the tough part with samosas. These were flaky with no toughness.
The lamb vindaloo was certainly lively, but not too spicy. (I ordered it medium hot and it came that way--sort of 7 out of 10 on the heat scale.) The lamb was sufficiently tender which is the first thing I look for in an Indian lamb dish. I thought the sauce was a bit one-dimensional, but still satisfying. Could use a side of raita.
The baingan bharta was the best I've had yet. It had that beautiful mashed consistency with plenty of zing from the garlic, ginger and eggplant.
The chicken spinach dish featured plenty of skinless chicken thigh, almost too much in that I really love that curried Indian spinach sauce with just about anything. So the chicken kind of dominated the dish.
I ordered ginger naan which was sprinkled with cilantro and was both tasty and useful for sopping up the delicious sauces.
Caution: Yelp had this place listed with a full bar, now corrected, which was wrong. WIne and beer only.
We will be back when in that part of town. The ambience and table settings are comfortable. I won't have my sights set on a Beefeater martini now that I know. I look forward to exploring more facets of Dhaba's reliable cuisine.