The Best Indian Food in Metro Detroit
From a Bengali corridor in Hamtramck to chaat houses in Canton, the region's South Asian food scene covers more ground than the city gets credit for.
Metro Detroit's South Asian food scene does not announce itself. There is no single neighborhood you drive to for Indian food the way you drive to Mexicantown for tacos or Dearborn for Lebanese cooking. What exists instead is a scatter: a Bengali corridor in Hamtramck, a cluster of North Indian restaurants around Rochester Road in Troy, vegetarian chaat houses in Canton, family-run Punjabi kitchens in Madison Heights, and an Indian gastropub near Eastern Market that made the Detroit Free Press's top ten list.
The geography reflects the community. Metro Detroit's South Asian population is large but spread across Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties, concentrated in engineering and tech corridors in the suburbs. The restaurants that serve them are not destination spots for food tourists. They are neighborhood businesses doing consistent work for regulars who know what they want.
Before going further: Hamtramck's Bengali and Bangladeshi restaurants are not covered in depth here, because we covered them in the Hamtramck dining guide. The food is worth understanding as its own tradition. Bangladeshi cooking shares roots with Bengali Indian cuisine but diverges in meaningful ways: heavier use of mustard oil, a halal foundation, less reliance on dairy, and a repertoire built around fish (especially hilsa) and rice rather than bread. Al-Haramain and Al-Amana on Joseph Campau are the longtime anchors of that corridor, and the Hamtramck guide does them better justice than a single paragraph here can.
What follows is the Indian restaurant landscape in the rest of metro Detroit: the city proper, Troy, Canton, Madison Heights, Ferndale, and the Farmington Hills and Grosse Pointe corridors.
Midnight Temple (Eastern Market, Detroit)
2466 Riopelle St, Detroit
Midnight Temple is the most interesting Indian restaurant in the city, and the hardest to categorize. Owner Akash Sudhakara built it in Eastern Market on the second floor of a century-old slaughterhouse, spending nearly three years on the concept before opening in May 2024. The staircase is lined with saris. The dining room mixes Hindu relics, estate-sale rugs, and pews from closed churches. The menu is Indian street food meets gastropub, and most items run under $20.
The restaurant earned a spot at No. 10 on the 2024 Detroit Free Press/Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers Top 10 New Restaurants and Dining Experiences list. That recognition tracks with what the space is actually doing: palak chaat with crispy spinach, yogurt, and tamarind; masala dosas; pav bhaji; pakora fritters; hakka noodles. The kitchen draws on street food traditions from different parts of India and serves it in a room that does not look like any other Indian restaurant in Michigan.
The bar program goes with it. Cocktails that use cardamom, tamarind, and turmeric. Late hours on weekends, with a DJ. The chicory coffee, per the restaurant's own description, comes from Sudhakara's family farm in Chikmagalur. Sudhakara is clear that the restaurant reflects his personal heritage, and the specificity shows.
If you have been to Indian restaurants in metro Detroit and found them predictable, Midnight Temple is the antidote. It is not trying to replicate a hotel-dining-room version of Indian food. It is trying to do something else, and it is succeeding.
Ashoka Indian Cuisine (Troy)
3642 Rochester Rd, Troy
Ashoka has won the Metro Times Best of Detroit readers' poll for Best Indian Restaurant multiple times, and the recognition reflects a real consensus among the area's South Asian community. The menu is one of the longest in the region: South Indian dosas alongside North Indian curries, tandoori preparations, biryanis, and a buffet that food writers covering the Detroit suburbs cite as one of the largest in the area.
According to the Detroit News, Ashoka has been voted Best Indian Restaurant in the state, though I cannot verify the source or year of that designation. What is verifiable is the menu's range and the restaurant's reputation among regulars. If you want to eat across different regional styles of Indian cooking in one sitting, the lunch buffet at Ashoka is the place to do it.
Entrees span the standard North Indian repertoire (butter chicken, lamb rogan josh, korma) and venture into South Indian territory with dosas and sambar. Spice levels adjust to request. The buffet approach lets you sample across the menu rather than committing to a single dish, which is useful if you are trying to understand what a kitchen does well.
Rochester Road in Troy has several Indian restaurants. Ashoka is the one that has held the region's attention longest.
NeeHee's (Canton)
45656 Ford Rd, Canton
NeeHee's does one thing that almost no other restaurant in metro Detroit does: Indian street food, all vegetarian, with a menu built around chaat. More than 30 varieties of chaat. Pani puri with tamarind water. Bhel puri with puffed rice and chutneys. Dahi papdi with yogurt and pomegranate. South Indian dosas, uttapams, and idli alongside Indo-Chinese dishes like gobi Manchurian and hakka noodles.
The restaurant has been at this location on Ford Road in Canton for well over a decade. Thrillist cited it among the nation's top Indian restaurants in 2018. The Troy location on Rochester Road operates separately. The Canton kitchen has built a following among the region's vegetarian South Asian community, and among food-curious eaters who want something genuinely different from the butter-chicken-and-naan template.
NeeHee's is not fine dining. It is a casual counter-service operation with the sensibility of a chaat house. The portions are generous. The menu rewards exploration. If you have eaten your way through the North Indian standards available everywhere and want something the rest of the region does not have, this is where to go.
Charminar Biryani House (Troy + Detroit)
Troy: 3059 Rochester Rd | Detroit: 1226 Griswold St
Biryani is the focus at Charminar, and the operation has expanded to fill enough demand to support multiple metro Detroit locations. The Troy restaurant on Rochester Road is the full-service location; downtown Detroit and Midtown locations operate in a smaller format. The goat biryani is the most-cited dish in reviews: long-grain rice, whole spices, slow-cooked meat. The butter chicken is a second-order standout.
The Troy location runs a lunch buffet. The menu extends beyond biryani into kebabs, curries, and wraps, but the biryani is the reason to go. Chef Sam, according to the restaurant's own description, has over 40 years of experience making the dish. I have not eaten here, so I am drawing on available reporting rather than personal experience. What appears across multiple accounts is a consistent lunch buffet and a biryani that earns return visits.
For the Detroit proper location, the Griswold Street spot is small, useful for a takeout biryani on a weekday.
Phulkari Punjabi Kitchen (Madison Heights)
27707 Dequindre Rd, Madison Heights
Phulkari has been at this address under different names for over 20 years, first as Indo Pak Restaurant and now as Phulkari Punjabi Kitchen. The focus is North Indian and Punjabi cooking in a room that is, by most accounts, a step below functional: the food is the priority, and the space makes no argument otherwise.
The Metro Times included it in their 25 Best Indian Restaurants in metro Detroit roundup. Accounts across Tripadvisor and Yelp land in the same place: lamb biryani, saag, chaat papdi, halwa puri on weekends, and chili cheese naan that regulars specifically seek out. No alcohol. The crowd is predominantly South Asian, which is usually the most reliable signal about where the cooking is actually good.
For readers who want Punjabi home-style cooking without the buffet-restaurant atmosphere of larger spots, Phulkari's combination of longevity, community following, and focused menu is a reason to make the drive to Madison Heights.
Star of India (Ferndale)
180 W Nine Mile Rd, Ferndale
Star of India won the Metro Times Best of Detroit readers' poll for Best Indian Restaurant in 2023. The restaurant has been on Nine Mile Road in Ferndale for roughly 20 years, and the menu went through a significant overhaul after new ownership took over in 2022. The current kitchen produces North Indian classics (butter chicken, goat korma, seekh kebabs) alongside a menu that reviewers describe as consistently prepared and fairly priced.
The 2023 Detroit News review of the post-remodel restaurant noted the dining room got a pop of color alongside the menu changes. The restaurant operates as halal. I haven't been since the new ownership took over, so I'm drawing on the review record and the poll result rather than recent personal experience. The Metro Times poll reflects readership voting rather than critical judgment, but it is a meaningful signal about which restaurants the metro area's Indian food community considers strong.
Nine Mile Road in Ferndale has several good restaurants. Star of India is the reason to specifically plan a stop there.
Noorjahan Indian Cuisine (Grosse Pointe Park and Grosse Pointe Woods)
Grosse Pointe Park: 16624 Mack Ave | Grosse Pointe Woods: 20641 Mack Ave
Noorjahan has staked out a different part of metro Detroit: the Grosse Pointe corridor on Mack Avenue, where Indian restaurants are not common. The two Mack Avenue locations serve the same core menu, with 16 different curry options, naan, and preparations that reviewers single out for rich, consistent flavor.
For readers on the east side of metro Detroit, Noorjahan fills a real gap. For readers driving from Ann Arbor, the Grosse Pointe locations add distance without adding enough differentiation to justify the detour over the Troy or Ferndale options. The restaurant has built a loyal following in its neighborhood, and that counts for something in a stretch of metro Detroit that largely does not have South Asian cooking.
Basil Indian Bistro (Farmington Hills)
32621 Northwestern Hwy, Farmington Hills
Metro Times called Basil Indian Bistro a Farmington Hills gem in a 2023 writeup focused on chef-owner Hema Patel, who emigrated from Gujarat and opened this as her first restaurant. The kitchen leans toward Gujarati and North Indian preparations: chicken methi with fenugreek, bhindi masala with crisp okra, chicken karahi. The Metro Times reviewer noted the restaurant uses more dark meat chicken than is typical and serves larger portions of protein than most comparable Indian restaurants.
Basil is dinner-only (Tuesday through Sunday, 5 to 9:30 p.m.) and keeps a short, focused menu rather than covering the full North-South Indian range. The dining room is minimal. The food is the point. Patel's Gujarati background shapes the vegetable dishes specifically: bhindi masala, chicken methi, preparations where the vegetable matters rather than just the sauce.
For the Farmington Hills area, where Indian restaurant options are generally thinner, Basil is the standout.
The Bangladeshi Corridor: A Different Tradition
Hamtramck's Conant Street corridor, which Michigan Radio and the Detroit Free Press have covered extensively, runs from roughly Holbrook to Carpenter along Conant, a strip known as Banglatown. Aladdin Sweets & Cafe at 11945 Conant, which has operated since 1998 according to Hamtramck Review coverage, is one of the community anchors. The Bangladeshi community in Hamtramck and the North Detroit neighborhood adjacent to it numbers in the tens of thousands, according to reporting by Model D Media, and the corridor reflects that population density.
The food at restaurants on Conant is not Indian in the sense of what you would find in Troy or Canton. It is Bangladeshi, which means halal, rice-centered, built around fish (especially hilsa), and cooked in mustard oil rather than ghee. The biryani is a different preparation from the Hyderabadi biryani you'd find at Charminar. The flavors are distinct. Eating your way through the corridor is a different experience from eating at a North Indian restaurant in the suburbs, and it rewards treating it as such.
The Hamtramck dining guide covers Al-Haramain, Al-Amana, and the broader corridor in depth. If you go to Hamtramck for Bangladeshi food and then drive to Troy for North Indian in the same afternoon, you will have done something most visitors to metro Detroit never do, and you will understand why these are distinct cuisines that happened to end up in the same region.
A few restaurants that appeared in recent lists that I haven't been able to verify with enough confidence to include here: New Delhi Indian Restaurant (Sterling Heights, 37206 Dequindre Rd) and Authentikka (Canton, 42070 Ford Rd) both have positive reputations in Yelp and Tripadvisor reviews, but I do not have enough independent reporting to say anything useful. They are on the list for a future visit.
This guide covers sit-down restaurants and counter-service operations with verified current addresses. Hours change; confirm before driving. The Hamtramck Bangladeshi corridor is covered separately at Hamtramck Is Worth the Drive.