I actually made it here on opening day. I’d been reading about this place for months now and a friend I was eating Indian food with (on Friday) reminded me it was opening the following Monday. I had the day off of work and convinced a few friends to join me – it wasn’t difficult.
The place is in a strip mall three doors down from an Indian restaurant and grocery store. But it’s a completely different animal. It’s Tandoori-fired pizza topped with various Indian toppings. There are quite a few articles to read about this, so I won’t rehash all the details, but suffice it to say, the owner knows what he’s doing and intends to take this bigger than just a strip mall in Eden Prairie. It took us a while to decide what to eat, but we ended up splitting three appetizers and three pizzas to make sure we could get maximum coverage out of our visit.
We ended up with the cayenne dusted crispy deep-fried okra fries (Served with a black salt and buttermilk sauce), stuffed potato cakes (served with golden raisin ginger sauce), and roasted smashed eggplant pate (served with naan) for our appetizers. Then, for our pizzas, we got a Chicken Kebab pizza, a Paneer pizza, and a Potato & Tandoor-Roasted Vegetable pizza.
A couple of us also got beers, since we weren’t going back to an office anywhere. The beer dispensing system is a thing of mystery. It’s got a magnet covering a hole in the bottom of the cup and when you set it on the dispenser, it pours the beer from the bottom-up. Magic.
The naan with the roasted smashed eggplant pate (which a certain unnamed member of our party referred to as “slurry”) was good. We all decided it needed a little more zing to the pate, but a lot of Minnesotans will be extremely happy with this – especially because it’s drizzled with clarified butter before it’s served.
The Paneer pizza was quite good. The non-melting cheese cubes on top were really a treat when you bit into one, which is good because they were plentiful. There was a generous amount of peppers on the top of the pizza, as well. The tomato-fenugreek sauce on the top was different from any pizza sauces I’ve had, but definitely in a good way. A solid pizza overall.
The cayenne dusted crispy deep-fried okra fries were one of the highlights of the meal. One of our guys doesn’t even like okra, but was ALL really liked these. They were almost hyper-fried. Like way past any fried okra I’ve had (and my family is from the south, so I’ve eaten my fair share of okra), but it made them little crispy chip-like things. Sooooo amazing, especially with the black salt and buttermilk sauce. And there’s a ton of them – just get these and thank me later.
The Chicken Kebab pizza was also good – and very similar to the paneer pizza (but with chicken instead of non-melting cheese). Lots of peppers and that delicious tomato-fenugreek sauce – like the paneer pizza. I’m not complaining, I assure you. I loved this pizza.
The stuffed potato cakes were stuffed with chili-spiced spinach green. I’ve had something this, somewhere else, but it wasn’t nearly as good as this one. Especially with this awesome ginger golden raisin sauce. A great appetizer.
The winner of the day was the Potato & Tandoor-Roasted Vegetable pizza. It’s a good mix of roasted vegetables and has mango powder (which I can can’t even comprehend what that even is) and black salt. But the amazing part of this is actually TWO amazing parts: habanero harissa sauce and the fact that it’s served on potato-chili naan, instead of the plain naan that the other two pizzas were served on. It definitely had some zing to it and we all loved the heat. It might need a warning for Minnesotan’s who are spice-adverse. It was the best thing I’ve eaten in a while. I’ll be recommending this to tons of people.
Amazing job, Pizza Karma!! You’re nailing it!!!
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