Cumin

I admit I'm woefully behind on updating a few restaurants. I went to Cumin in min-June before heading off to South Africa for the World Cup. It also happened to be right after I returned from Nepal and India, a true comparison indeed. Since it has been a long time, my memory on individual dishes is a bit rusty. I was surprised to see too that Cumin has gotten a lot of good press since I've been there. All in all the food was tasty, but there was a lot of front of house and service issues that needed ironing out. We were seating for a very long time before any service came to us with menus, and our wait times just kept on increasing throughout the night. Once we did order, we had a tough time with the language barrier. Yes, a language barrier in an ethnic restaurant in wicker park. When we finished ordering we got a look that suggested we asked for a whole goat in Chinese. Everything worked out in the end with pretty good food to boot. I wish we would have tried some of the Nepalese dishes, but people felt more comfortable with Indian dishes like tandoori or masala vegetables. We scored a good one with the vegetarian monsoon platter. 
Maybe the service issues were opening week bugs and have since been corrected. The food is worth a second look the next time I'm craving Indian and Nepalese cuisine. Cumin also offers lunch buffets and delivery.

No meal is complete without some rice pudding...