Kathis & Kababs opens in Hicksville

Sometimes you can just tell. Before you’ve even taken a bite, before you’ve even stepped through the door, you can tell — the food in this place is going to be amazing. And you know this, first, because the eatery is tiny, a little slip of a storefront between an Asian spa and a hulking laundromat. Second, it sits in the shadow of an LIRR overpass, vibrating along with the Hicksville schedule, on a stretch of Broadway that makes it easy to miss and impossible to locate, no matter how wildly its grand opening pennant flags flap in the breeze.

Finding a place with food this amazing means driving past it no fewer than two or three times before discovering there’s almost no place to park out front and only a few spots unspoken for in the back, which may mean cozying your car up to the dumpster and slinking down an alley to the front door.

And right before you reach the door leading to all that amazing food will be someone’s idea of a patio, that idea being a quartet of metal tables and a few yards of AstroTurf. This too is a surefire indication that a great meal awaits, as is a sign in the window in which the restaurant’s name is written on paper plates, one letter per plate. K-A-T-H-I-S-&-K-A-B-A-B-S.

Few restaurants meet all of the above requirements, which perhaps explains why they so often leave us disappointed, and why Kathis & Kababs, which opened this month, hasn’t yet. It announces itself as "K & K" in giant orange letters but otherwise relies entirely on its food to plead its case. (The owners declined to be interviewed.)

K & K’s bifurcated menu has eloquence in spades. First, the kati rolls, 10 wraps made with whole wheat flatbread that barely contain their juiciness, whether filled with chicken tikka ($9.95), lamb ($12.95) or a variety of mushrooms ($9.95), all of them augmented by bits of cabbage, pickled and sauteed onions. The roti are without exception well-priced, heavily stuffed, irresistibly well-spiced and among the best I’ve had on Long Island.

The kebab half of the menu offers more familiar tandoor-fired fare, but also several vegetarian options, including achari aloo (yogurt-marinated potatoes), the cottage cheese of paneer tikka and a mixed vegetable kebab (all $12.95). Other notable items include bone-in chicken Afghani marinated in a cashew paste ($15.95), salmon tikka ($19.95) and mutton burra ($24.95). The leading ingredients might change but thanks to the kitchen’s tandoorified dexterity, all fish, fowl and fauna emerge with the proper kiss of char.

Tired of patronizing the buzzy places, paying top-drawer prices for bottom-of-the-barrel meals? Maybe, as the old song says, you’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places. There’s lots of amazing food out there. You just have to know where not to look.

Kathis & Kababs, 55 Broadway, Unit A, Hicksville, 516-595-7775, kathiskababs.com. Opening hours are Wednesday through Monday from noon to midnight. Closed Tuesdays.

By Scott Vogel

scott.vogel@newsday.com

Newsday writer and restaurant critic Scott Vogel aims for a refreshing, gimlet-eyed take on the Long Island food scene, often while drinking a refreshing gimlet.