Indus Progressive Indian, an award-winning Midwestern-influenced restaurant, honors family recipes from North India while transcending traditions with smoky masala beef brisket and fiery pork belly vindaloo on the North Shore.
Owners Ajit Kalra and Sukhu Kalra first made their debut with Bhoomi, a casual Indian food hall stall in the Loop in 2021. The husband and wife then opened the cozy finer dining restaurant in their chosen hometown of Highland Park in 2024. Indus won our Readers’ Choice Award for Suburban Restaurant of the Year in 2025.
The couple wanted to pay homage to the ancient Indus Valley civilization, believed to be one of the earliest epicenters of spice blending, while bringing together the food cultures of modern-day India and the U.S., where they’ve lived half their lives as immigrants. For Chicago palates in particular, that still means meat to some degree. They navigate cultural and religious beliefs with deep understandings of heritage and flavor.
The restaurateurs have had help, of course. A consulting chef codified their home recipes, while executive chef Vetri Selvaraj and his team make them into handsome dishes. Selvaraj was previously at Ettan, a Michelin-recommended Californian Indian restaurant in Palo Alto.
At Indus, the tender masala brisket, served with an earthy barbecue chutney, began as a backyard experiment and has become a bestseller, perhaps surprising for an Indian restaurant.
“A lot of India, especially the Hindu population, almost never eats beef,” said Ajit Kalra, who’s from New Delhi. He and his wife created a dry rub spice using kasuri methi, or dried fenugreek leaves, then a chutney with a house-made barbecue sauce base. “Frying up shallots in butter, and infusing Indian flavors with fresh tomatoes.”
More Top Picks Best Walking Shoes For Arthritis In Seniors
After hand-trimming the beef, then applying the dry rub, they smoke it for 14 to 18 hours. And they use the same smoker for the pork belly as well as eggplant and daal for vegetarian small plates.
That brisket, sliced into stunning supple slabs outlined in beautifully blackened bark, comes presented on a wooden plank platter with their thick and pungent barbecue chutney, a perfect condiment for dragging the accompanying roasted potato wedges.
Mamma’s chole, or chickpeas, become intensely infused, served with a golden puff of crispy poori bread, the recipe adapted from Sukhu Kalra’s mother, Virender Kaur.
“That comes from my home,” said Sukhu Kalra, who’s from Chandigarh. “I shared it with Ajit, and once we had kids, this became a family favorite.”
It was a weekend tradition to make her childhood chole and fry the poori fresh.
At Indus, they soak the raw hard chickpeas overnight to soften, then simply pressure cook. The rest comes from the masala and onions, tomatoes, plus fresh tamarind pulp. Then they simmer everything together and wait, eventually seasoning well and garnishing the dish with slivered raw onions and thinly sliced jalapeños.
“In India, we use different chiles,” she added.
But the poori remains the same, made with whole wheat flour, water and a touch of salt, gently pressed and then fried, ballooning into a gorgeous orb.
That chole with poori is easily my favorite dish, the chickpeas comforting yet powerful, and the bread a demonstration of exquisite technique.
“This was the very first item that went on our menu,” said Ajit Kalra, whose father was Jiggs Kalra, an international food icon known as the czar of Indian cuisine, who died at 72 in 2019.
I’d like to think that the elder Kalra would have been exceptionally impressed by what may be the most challenging dish at Indus: the buttery pork belly with vindaloo sauce, which takes nine days from process to plate.
It begins with a seven-day cure, then a dry rub and one day smoke, and finally another day or so to braise in lard. But the pork is not the point.
“The reason we created the pork belly was to really showcase that tangy, potent, spicy vindaloo sauce,” said Ajit Kalra. “We do it in the traditional Goan style, fermenting chiles with vinegar.”
They finish the sauce with a touch of port wine for a nod to its Portuguese roots.
The dish has been a bit of a challenge because it’s their only truly spice-forward dish, and many of their customers don’t eat pork.
“Our mission statement was always to bring Indian food to our adopted home in an accessible and approachable way, which meant flavor building rather than adding more spice and heat,” said Ajit Kalra.
But 25% to 30% of their guests are Indian families, so they and other hot food fans can request the sauce even hotter.
The pork belly itself is a precise modern statement piece. And the vindaloo sauce, ruddy and rustic, slowly unfolds with intellectual complexity before delivering a primal punch. Make sure you order a side of the fluffy basmati rice with cumin seeds, aka jeera bhaat, or perhaps fragrant garlic naan, or possibly a thick mango lassi or really just get all of the above to temper the fire.
The kurkuri bhindi, or crispy okra, has become a fan favorite for good reason, transforming the polarizing pods into feathery threads for an irresistible finger-food snack.
More Top Picks Best Reading Glasses With Blue Light Filter For Computer Use
The daal Indus, black lentils smoked for 12 hours with ghee, is meant as a side, but it’s a main event with puffy butter naan cooked in their clay tandoor oven.
A duck kebab, skewered breast meat chunks, is cooked well with house spices, but seems too dry in texture and concept compared to the rest of the thoughtful menu.
A Valrhona dark chocolate torte is not the cake I expected, but more of a pudding ringed with a pretty blood orange granita. Inspired by a flourless chocolate cake, it was meant to be a spiced entremet or mousse-like cake, which it didn’t quite achieve. The sous chefs have experience with Indian desserts, however, so I do hope someday we see their interpretations of mithai.
The masala chai, meanwhile, is so rich and aromatic that it could serve as dessert, and that’s before you add sugar to sweeten.
A vibrant kokum mezcal cocktail mixes house-made infusions of the tangy fruit in St-Germain elderflower liqueur, plus Kashmiri red chile syrup with Rosaluna mezcal and Montenegro amaro for a deliciously balanced drink.
Most of the front-of-house and back-of-house staff have been with Indus since they opened two years ago, said the Kalras. From the executive chef to Nicol Cervantes, who was my stellar server on two of three visits. Cervantes started on opening day as a teen who had just finished high school, and now is old enough to finally taste and personally recommend cocktails herself. She and her colleagues worked together with considerate ease.
Indus has fine dining aspirations. Even on the sidewalk dog-friendly patio, by night, lit by tall, tiny tabletop lights. The dining room and bar, while filled with personal artful touches, could use a refresh by a professional designer, just as the menu benefited from a consulting chef. The interior design deserves a setting as refined as the menu.
Especially since choosing the space was so meaningful.
“Sukhu and I were taking our kids to the July Fourth parade,” said Ajit Kalra. “We were parking the car when the mass shooting happened.”The Highland Park parade shooting occurred on Independence Day in 2022. The Kalras did not know how to cope and neither did their community.
“So we decided to cook,” he said. “We started cooking at home for our neighbors who were reeling in shock.”
The couple also brought meals from Bhoomi to give at schools, to first responders and to anybody who was helping with mental health support.
After watching their hometown experience a unique depression, with longtime businesses leaving empty storefronts in the neighborhood where the shooting took place, the restaurateurs realized that they had a shrinking window to make an impact in their own community.
“Financially it’s such a big risk to come to a low-density neighborhood, especially with a niche cuisine like Indian cuisine that hasn’t taken off like Italian food or Chinese food in the United States, especially in the Midwest,” added Ajit Kalra, who specializes in risk management in his day job. “But we felt that this was our privilege to be able to spend our time, energy and capital investment here in our neighborhood.”
Years later now, it’s still miraculous to me that such a healing and joyful dining experience can exist.
Indus is not immune to economic challenges, however, and “the North Shore is all about GLP-1s, so dining habits have changed dramatically,” added Ajit Kalra.
The medications best known for weight loss commonly reduce appetite for food and alcohol.
The loaded Bhoomi burger with a chargrilled lamb patty, previously served with exceptional fresh-cut spiced fries, has now become a solo slider in a recent menu change to more small plates. The food hall, where the stall was located, closed permanently on June 27. But Bhoomi is still participating in food festivals this fall and expects to open a new location in the Loop soon.
“Indus continues to be the place where we bring community together,” said Sukhu Kalra.
Because that was the original point of it all.
More Top Picks Best Flashlights For Firefighters
Indus Progressive Indian
617 Central Ave., Highland Park
312-282-8064
Open: Tuesday to Thursday 4:30 until 8:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 9:30 p.m., Sunday 4 until 8 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: $36 (masala brisket), $15 (pork belly vindaloo), $22 (Mamma’s chole poori), $14 (kurkuri bhindi), $9 (Bhoomi lamb slider), $5 (rice), $12 (Valrhona torte), $7 (mango lassi), $13 (kokum mezcal cocktail)
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible with restrooms on single level
Tribune rating: Excellent, three stars
Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; zero stars, unsatisfactory.
Meals are paid for by the Tribune.
Big screen or home stream, takeout or dine-in, Tribune writers are here to steer you toward your next great experience. Sign up for your free weekly Eat. Watch. Do. newsletter here.