Earlier this year, the owners of Kalustyan’s—the Indian culinary equivalent of Sephora—filled with assorted spices, rice, grains, teas, nuts and all manner of aromatic and wonderful imported products from India—decided to alter the lower Lexington Avenue landscape with Kalustyan’s Masala Café. This was a great idea in theory—open a restaurant as an edible illustration of the aromatic wares available up the block. But their first chef, while a good cook, was not quite right, and the vibe-less space didn’t hold much promise.

And so, as with style-poor straight guys all over the nation, there was a makeover.

The owners hired a new (and quite talented) chef—Mohan Ismail of Tabla, Spice Market, and most recently of Farmer Dan’s Blue Hill Stone Barns. And to match the terrific new food, they are in the process of redesigning the space and improving the service—to make it a warm, inviting neighborhood hang. The restaurant isn’t Spice Market in décor (but what really is?). It’s a modest, jewel-toned space, that could use something to cover the tile floors and might benefit from more comfortable chairs (the banquettes aren’t bad) and perhaps some curtains to keep the plight of Lexington Avenue out of view, but other than the lack of sex appeal of the space, the food is just delicious, so bring your own atmosphere and enjoy!

I approached the menu like an Indian banquet feast on par with a wedding-rich Bollywood film—and I encourage you to go with enough friends to do the same—ordering lots of little plates to start, then some fish and then some meat. Begin your meal with multiple orders of curried tamarind chicken puffs ($8)—delicate phylo pastries that are so light that they seem to have been inflated from the inside out—poofed up so they are like little triangle balloons—that give a good crunch before revealing intensely flavored minced chicken inside. By all means liberally dip these in the accompanying cool and creamy cilantro yogurt sauce. In fact, if you have ordered some of the heavenly naans ($3) from the tandori oven (all you Atkins folks, just try to resist these pillowy breads), dip the bread in the sauce too. Dip your fingers in the sauce. Dip your date’s fingers in the sauce. Get some strangers in there too. Get the idea?

After you’re done dipping, order the allepo glazed tuna carpaccio ($9)—a wide thin slip of ruby red tuna topped with the coolest sort of Indian succotash made of firm soy beans, lime juice, fried crumbled silverfish (slightly salty little fishies), and tossed in a feisty sambal puree made of red chiles, shrimp paste, dried shrimp, candied citrus zest, and lime juice. It’s bold and beautiful.

Next, go for a plate of the juiciest chicken tikka ($8/16) ever, marinated in lemon, rosemary and thyme with harissa and a shaved Asian pear and arugula salad, and the TelliCherry tandori shrimp ($10/19) with a killer marinated cucumber salad. The fat, head-on shrimp are moist inside, with a peppery char, and the cucumber salad is possibly the most amazing thing I have ever seen done to cucumbers next to Gus’s pickles. The crunchy half mooned cucumbers are tossed in a delicious vinaigrette derived from Mohan’s mother’s pickle recipe made from pineapple juice, green mangos, green papaya, lemongrass, red and green chiles, tumeric, black mustard seeds and ginger. Acid, heat, sweet, it’s all in there. You can’t even imagine this dressing—you must go and have it for yourselves. Ask nicely and maybe he’ll start selling it at Kalustyan’s and you can take it home and drink it from the container.

Moving onto the entrée arena, I loved the grilled sambal brushed skate wing with cucumber raita and lemon sumac oil ($16)—a sort of barbecued take on this, the corduroy of fish—its flesh so moist and tender, it pulls apart into skinny supple strips, and lands in your mouth with a great amount of chile-driven heat, cooled off by the cucumber raita. Perfect balance. For vegetarians, the forbidden black rice dish, tossed with a vegetable congee made from green tomatoes, zucchini and chiles—is so amp’d up with flavor that you have expect it to get up and sing.

My favorite dish of Mohan’s is his vindaloo. When he was at Spice Market, he made it with pork, but here, where pork is verboten, he makes it with lovely melting chunks of braised veal, in a thick sweet-tart vindaloo puddle that puckers your cheeks and leaves you unable to stop devouring more and more of this dish. You just keep going. It makes you sweat. You eat more. It makes you hot. You dig into the pot with bread as your fork. It makes you happy. And really, isn’t that what eating is all about?

But you will be made even happier if you save room for dessert. They are quite yummy. Jehangir Mehta, the pastry chef known for serving vegetables and spices as dessert up at Aix, is consulting on the dessert menu here and there are some showstoppers. The stone fruit naan ($7)—a wide stretched out coconut-laced naan is cooked in the tandori oven with a topping of roasted apricots, plum, nectarines, and peaches. It’s topped with a quenelle of vanilla ice cream studded with dried fruit. Another must have is the basil cake—a moist green pound cake that is sort of like zucchini bread, but better—served with a fresh and vibrant salsa made from pineapple and grapes with a tart papaya sorbet ($7).

There’s a lot of great food to enjoy at Kalustyan’s Café—and in this way, the restaurant’s makeover has been a huge success. Yes, it could use the Queer Eye’s Tom Filicia to fix up some design issues, but in the kitchen, Ted Allen would have no issue. He’d be flirting with Mohan (who is quite handsome and quite taken), and kvelling over the food, begging for recipes all along.

Andrea Strong