In March, after six years in Mount Prospect, Shabin Mathews moved his Indian restaurant, Trilokah, to Lincoln Park, up the street from Pequod’s. He either generated an immediate fan base or brought half of the northwest suburbs with him, because the place has been packed every day. The crowds, mostly people of South Asian heritage, are coming for the distinctive and crave-worthy cooking of Kerala in southern India.

After one hectic meal there and a two-hour wait for carry out, I’ve cracked the code: Go at lunch. The place is less harried, the food better, and the staff able to breathe. For a hearty bowl of what-all-the-fuss-is-about, try kizhi porotta with chicken, a coconut-rich varutharachathu stew over flaky porotta bread, wrapped in a banana leaf, and steamed. It’s dressed with spice-blasted bone-in pieces of Kerala fried chicken, a fried egg, and crunchy raw veggies. The beef fry, succulent and fatless, is also a winner. And for me, the kadala curry, with nutty black chickpeas in a coconut gravy, is a must.

The menu is huge and bears exploration. I can say the cauliflower 65 makes a fun fried app, the dosas are merely fine, and the egg kottu porotta, a crumbled bread fry-up, is like the matzo brei your bubbie would make if she came from Kochi. It’s pure comfort.