‎Aab India Restaurant - Grandview Heights, OH - Restaurant Review | 4ZFood

1st impression: "wow, these guys really want to be in the front of the phone book". Turns out, Aab is part of the Ambar family of restaurants from Cincinnati, and aab means "water of life" in Urdu. Housed in the old Thom's space on Grandview Avenue, Aab is doing a great job serving great tasting Indian dishes from both the North and South.

I always like the Thom's location. It had a nice outdoor patio, and great windows overlooking the side street. Plus it had a full bar, which was often crowded (although apparently not crowded enough for Thom). Aab has kept all of these positive features intact.

A few people received poor service when Aab opened, and there are plenty of bad posts about that. Well, they seemed to have the kinks worked out, at least today. We had drinks, soup, and luncheon portion entrée, and our check was delivered within 35 minutes - plenty good enough for lunch hour. Included was a description of everything, and a lengthy introduction to the side sauces.

They have a lunch menu, but they allow you to pick off anything from the main menu and order it instead if you would like. I tried the chicken tiki masala, which is chicken marinated in yogurt and spices and then served in a tomato and onion cream sauce. Ok, not health food, but really niiice with the peas and rice that accompanied it. My wife had the curried chicken, also a high calorie choice, but it was really good, too. You can order your dish as spicy hot as you'd like, on a scale of 1 to 6 - we each had the moderately hot, 4, which was perfect.

We started with each of the two soups. The dal soup, which was pureed lentils with some chunks of potatoes in it, was excellent, with a great spicy flavor. I had some of the most flavorful tomato soup I've every had. Not sure what the spices were, and I think those little white flecks were the remnants of cheese. Each soup was really good, worth-a-trip-back-good.

Along with each entrée, they serve a trio of sauces, each more delicious than the next. There is a sweet sauce based on tamarind, a savory sauce made largely from mint, and a hot sauce made from chilis and onions. They were all excellent and a real taste treat.

Assuming they have worked out the service issues that plagued opening, Aab has a chance to become one of the numerous great choices for food in the Grandview area. The food was really tasty, service good, nice ambiance, full bar, and convenient location. This has been a problem location for other restaurants, but I think we have winner here now.