Lehja: No Naan Sense Indian Food

I came home from one of the many late nights at work recently with no desire to spend an hour in the kitchen cooking dinner. The Wife felt the same way about the kitchen, so we started going through the usual "where sounds good to you" game. We went through the usual suspects and nothing was popping. One of us threw out Lehja. The Indian restaurant at Short Pump. We'd been talking about going for a while but had never made it yet.

We walked in to a funky modern restaurant, with a bar off to the right. In the dining room, zebra prints and modern furniture were everywhere.

Looking over the menu, we started with an order of the garlic naan (The Wife had read about this somewhere - it was supposed to be amazing. It was, we actually ordered seconds of this) and an order of Fire Cracker Chicken Tikka (It has a ghost pepper marinade that caught my eye).

The garlic naan was amazing. Soft, chewy light and garlicky.

The Fire Cracker Chicken Tikka was HOT. Not your typical ethnic food "hot" that's not really hot, no matter how much you ask them to make it hot. This was hot - in a good way, with a depth of flavor.

For entrees, The Wife ordered the Chicken Tikka Masala and I had the Khoya Malai Lamb.

The Wife's Chicken Tiki Masala was ordered medium spicy, after being talked off the super hot ledge by the waiter. It had a depth of flavor that I'd never quite had at a restaurant, very complex. The chicken comes in a tomato/cream sauce.

My Khoya Malai Lamb was outstanding as well. It was chunks of lamb in a cashew cream sauce with saffron. It didn't have the depth of flavor or the heat that the Wife's had, but was great nonetheless.

Both entrees were served with basmati rice.

Although we were stuffed, we persevered on to dessert and were glad we did. We ordered the Lehja Dessert Sampler.

The Sampler consisted of a Kulfi, which is made in house - it's like an Indian ice cream; a coconut keylime cake; and these two chocolate covered balls of what tasted like buttered rum cake. All were outstanding.

There are several things impressive about Lehja. Most everything appears to be made in house, and made to order. You can get anything there with varying degrees of heat because the do make it fresh.

They had a great wine list - although the by the glass offerings aren't very extensive, they is generally one of every varietal available by the glass.

I also can't say enough about the service. They were knowledgeable and attentive without being pushy.

We'll definitely go back next time we're craving ethnic food - and would recommend that everyone try it.