The recently reopened Devi Cafe and Bar is the kind of place New Yorkers and Londoners miss when they come to Moscow ?€” the kind of low-key Indian joint that blends into the concrete enough to hide a damn good restaurant.

Moscow has its fair share of decent Indian restaurants, but they usually fall into one of two categories: New Russian experiments and up-market attempts by resident Indians. Devi fits into a third category: the mom and pop Indian cafe. A spic-and-span nook in a basement on the campus of the People?€™s Friendship University, it?€™s staffed by Indian students. The restaurant has a new bar and feels like a standard stolovaya, or cafeteria, but the kitchen can do a whole lot better than pelmeni and shashlyk: The food at Devi is as good as you?€™ll get at any of the capital?€™s posher South Asian establishments. When I had a meal with some friends there last weekend we all left fat and happy. We took the try-everything, share-everything approach to ordering, and it worked well. For mains, we ordered Devi?€™s special chicken curry (125 rubles, or $4.30), chicken tikka masala (130 rubles), mutton curry (125 rubles) and Alu Palak (70 rubles), a minty vegetarian curry with potatoes.

To put out the fire on our food (everything was very spicy), we chose several orders of fried bread (40 rubles) and lemon rice (45 rubles), which turned out to be more like saffron rice but was still tasty. We spent a while gorging ourselves and then moved on to the dessert. The place has a glass display refrigerator filled with various milky creations, but we all chose the same thing ?€” ras malai, or curd cakes in milk with ginger and pistachios (20 rubles). Toward the end of dessert our waiter suggested some fresh nutmeg yam balls. Concerned about fitting out the door, we demurred, but he graciously gave us a box of them anyway.

The only problem with Devi is getting there. But it?€™s worth the trip ?€“ there aren?€™t many places in town that offer Indian food this good at prices this low.

21 Ulitsa Miklukho-Maklaya. Metro Yugo-Zapadnaya. Tel. 424-6360. Noon to midnight. Credit cards: none.

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