Hema shakes her head, smiling broadly. No, she says, this goes better. Not too oily. Better mixture.
Then Hema Potla, a short, cheerful, middle-age woman swathed in a large apron and wearing a baseball cap sideways, is off to her nearby kitchen to perform a gift of Indian cooking.
For appetizers, there is a very ample plate of vegetable samosas (55 cents)or vegetable pakoras ($1.49). They are fresh from the skillet and deliciously spiced.
Everything else is as good as the start. The vegetarian dishes, which are $2.99, are truly distinguishable from each other.
Navratan curry is a mixture of vegetables in an onion gravy. Choosa tikka masala ($3.99) is chicken marinated in yogurt and lemon and spices, and then baked with tomatoes and onions.
Don’t be shy about asking if there are any other dishes available. Potla, who also cooked at the Royal Cuisine (on the Devon Avenue strip) and Klay Oven (at Orleans and Hubbard), usually has several specialities, and most of them are South Indian.
Equally memorable are the desserts. Gajar ka halva ($1.29) is made of shredded carrots mixed with cream, butter and sugar. Better yet, there is mango or pistachio kulfi ($1.29). Potla makes it by cooking the pulp in cream, adding sugar and cardamon and then freezing it.
For this truly is her kitchen. Potla grinds and mixes all of her spices. That takes longer, she concedes, but it is worth the effort.
The service is slow. The room is quite modest-there are only a few tables that can seat four, and several smaller tables; a television sits atop a refrigerator in the corner of the room. Yet loyal customers flock from afar to taste the food that Potla cooked.
Years from now when the excitement of Devon Avenue is a memory, when newly arrived immigrants from Bombay and Lahore move on to other places, there will be stories about the great feasts there.
And they will surely talk about sitting in Hema’s Kitchen.
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Hema’s Kitchen, 6406 N. Oakley Ave., 312-338-1627. Hours: 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Mon.-Sat., 2-11 p.m. Sunday. No credit cards. BYOB.