What do the Indian restaurants in Budapest have in common with the city's étkezdék, or traditional Hungarian diners? The answer is, of course, not much, except everybody has a favorite they swear by. There seem to be lots of fans of Taj Mahal and the Chew Top 33" favors Salaam Bombay, while my preference has long been for Pandzsab. But, and this is also true of the aforementioned étkezdék, it is really a crapshoot in terms of the service and quality of cooking in all these restaurants. Early reports from Kohinoor Indiai és Pakisztáni Étterem, a new Indian/Pakistani restaurant on Wesselényi in District VII, were good, but could it distinguish itself from the ever-growing list of like-minded competitors?

Determined to have a unique experience and get the best of the restaurant, I decided to let the waitress recommend my meal from the Pakistani choices. Perhaps not wanting to appear uninformed, she claimed the Pakistani dishes were "anything with lamb." Not really wanting lamb, I asked if there were other Pakistani flavored dishes. Her response was "anything tandoori." So much for that idea, as tandoori, though also prevalent in Pakistani cooking, is already a fairly universal offering on the Indian food dining scene. But okay, tandoori - meat baked in a special clay oven - is always a safe bet, and the fish tikka (up top), butterfish tandoori, was well-spiced and a good deal for the price of Ft 1,800 (€7.15).

The chicken byrani (above), another traditional Indian and Pakistani specialty that is something like curry-fried rice, for a mere Ft 1,300 was fine, though a bit heavy-handed on potato and stingy with the chicken. I prefer the byrani at Bangla Büfé for a mere Ft 850.

For appetizers there were standard samosa for Ft 350 (second from top) and for Ft 450 I tried a shammi kebab, a "special kebab" which turned out not to resemble a kebab at all, but was rather a patty of mushy minced chicken. The yogurt salad (below) turned out to be more of a sauce or soup of standard Bird's Eye vegetables swimming in a yogurt base, randomly passed to us by a near-by diner who didn't want it.

Most disappointingly, all the dishes came with the same masala yogurt dipping sauce. Indian food is famous for its varied chutneys and spicy sauces from mint to sour cherry. The white yogurt was tired after the samosa, and boring after the butterfish.

That said, there is no real reason to dismiss Kohinoor outright. It is in a good location, not too far from Blaha Lujza tér, the quality good, and service casual, if a bit slow on the night we were there. But, as with all Indian restaurants, you might have a totally different experience at Kohinoor. If so, let us know. (I have, for example, just heard via my editors that they do a mean slow-cooked chicken-lentil dish called heleem khasz.) With these prices, I would be willing to roll the dice again.