The restaurant: Attached to high quality halal butcher and grocery store, Holy Joe’s Meats & More, Nawabs Kebabs turns that halal meat into miracles of tastes with its biryanis and kebabs. On the Northern side of UNCC, Nawabs’ has a small, no-thrills eating area and deli cooler filled with interesting Indian beverages. Dine in or, like most people, get your order to go. None of the flavors or textures of your meal will be diminished by the car ride, but the spicy smell of the tandoori-cooked meat and the herbal aroma of the naan will drive you crazy with hunger as you drive it home.

The cuisine: The most interesting dishes at Nawabs Kebabs are highlights from the cuisine of Hyderabad, a thriving metropolis in southern India. Hyderabad, once a quasi-independent fiefdom and Muslim enclave controlled by a long line of Nizams, or administrators, descended from Asaf Jah I, displays all the hallmarks of the Turkish and Central Asian cooking traditions of the long-ruling Mughal Empire. The culinary legend states that Turkish horsemen invented — or to be more accurate, popularized through their conquests — kebabs out of necessity. On long journeys far from their homes, horsemen had to use their swords as improvised cooking implements, using them to skewer the meat and then cooking it over their communal fires. What they would do if they were attacked while cooking remains unclear. Whether or not the legend is true, the kebab tradition swept across the Middle East, the Balkans, and down into the Indian subcontinent and is alive and well at Nawabs.

Our must order: Though it is a lesser consumed meat in America, lamb has always been an important protein throughout the Islamic world. The lamb sheehk kebab combo platter is a fine example of how flavorful lamb can be. Consisting of long pieces of minced lamb blended with herbs and spices and then cooked till crispy in the traditional tandoori oven, these kebabs lose none of their herbal sophistication or kick of spice when cooked in the clay pot oven. Be sure to top your lamb with the accompanying crisp mint chutney and creamy yogurt sauce. Served alongside the lamb is chana masala, chick peas cooked in a chili and tomato sauce, and aloo palak, a savory spinach and potato medley. Chicken dum biryani, another dish synonymous with Hyderabad, is a good pairing with the lamb sheehk kebabs. The chicken and rice are cooked together in the same pot with generous amounts of herbs and spices like coriander, saffron, mace, cardamom, cumin, and star anise. Mirchi ka salan, a traditional accompaniment for Hyderabadi biryanis consists of Indian chiles, peanuts and tamarind juice, and gives the biryani a touch of spicy complexity.

Why we go: India’s culinary offerings are so varied in flavor, sophisticated in craft, and rich in tradition that it would take an entire library of food writing to do it justice, as Nawabs so dutifully shows. It took too long for Indian food to get its due in America and now that it has, it seems that every month a new Indian restaurant is being added to the Charlotte food scene. Nawabs Kebabs is one of the best to open its doors in the last few years because of its commitment to honoring the cooking traditions of Hyderabad in addition to the delicious yet ubiquitous Punjabi dishes on offer everywhere else. —Travis Mullis

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