Our bread section alone has close to ten options, which is a lot to sort through if you didn't grow up eating any of them. Here's the short version: naan, roti, and chapathi are all Indian breads, but they're made differently, they taste different, and they're suited to different dishes.
Naan
Naan is a leavened flatbread made with a yeasted dough, which is what gives it that pillowy, slightly chewy texture with pockets of air. Ours is slapped onto the wall of the tandoor and baked at extreme heat for under a minute — you can see the char blisters where it touched the clay. That quick, high-heat bake is what naan actually is; nothing about it is deep-fried or pan-cooked. We serve it plain, or dressed up: garlic naan, onion naan, peshwari naan (stuffed sweet, with nuts and dried fruit), and our Rani Ki Special Naan. If you only order one bread on your first visit, naan is the classic choice — it's the bread most people picture when they think "Indian restaurant."
Chapathi (and roti)
Chapathi — often called roti elsewhere — is a thinner, unleavened whole-wheat flatbread, cooked on a flat griddle rather than in the tandoor. No yeast, no char, no pockets of air. It's lighter and a little more neutral in flavor than naan, which is exactly why it's the everyday bread in most Indian households — the kind you'd eat with dinner on a Tuesday, not necessarily the one you'd order to impress someone. If you're watching richness (naan's dough includes fat that chapathi's doesn't), chapathi is the better option.
Poori
We also serve poori, which is a different animal again — a small disc of unleavened dough that's deep-fried instead of baked or griddled, so it puffs up into a light, airy pocket. It's the bread you order for something a little more indulgent, closer to a treat than a staple.
Which bread goes with what
There's no strict rule, but a few pairings work especially well:
- Naan with anything rich and saucy — Chicken Makhni, dal makhani, a creamy paneer dish. The naan's texture is built to scoop up gravy without falling apart.
- Chapathi with drier or lighter dishes, or if you want a bread that won't compete with what it's next to.
- Garlic or onion naan on their own, honestly — they're good enough to eat without anything on them.
All of our breads are made to order, not pre-baked and reheated, so there's a short wait when they come out — that's the tandoor doing its job.