Bithi Begum, left, and Tipu Rahman with roast hilsa.
Heelsha Authentic Indian Cuisine
- 1550 NE 164th St.
- North Miami Beach, FL 33162
- 305-919-8393
- Report an error
- $$, $10 - $20
- Indian
Most Indian places don't have juice bars, but Heelsha isn't your ordinary Indian place. The menu features traditional Bengali and Indian dishes, from fish fritters to vindaloo, as well as fruit-based fish curries, salads and naan bread wraps. The emphasis is on healthful, home-style dishes.
Most Indian places don't have juice bars, but Heelsha isn't your ordinary Indian place. Housed in a former Caribbean restaurant in North Miami Beach, it resembles a house, painted light yellow with a little patio out back surrounded by plants and bamboo screens.
Inside you'll find a funky, colorful space with gleaming paddle fans churning overhead. Sheer, glittery saris flutter from windows and divider screens. Every inch of shelf and window space is filled with kitschy flea-market finds.
Heelsha is another way of spelling hilsa, the national fish of Bengal, a type of large, silvery shad in the herring family. Owners Tipu Rahman and his wife, Bithi Begum, are from Bangladesh, the eastern part of the divided region of Bengal. (West Bengal is in India.)
The couple previously ran Renaisa in Northeast Miami. After a falling-out with the landlord, they moved their tandoori oven to the 164th Street space, put in a juice bar and opened Heelsha. The menu features traditional Bengali and Indian dishes, from fish fritters to vindaloo, as well as fruit-based fish curries, salads and naan bread wraps.
The emphasis is on healthful, home-style dishes. You can select a meat or seafood from one list, a vegetable, tofu or paneer cheese from another and have them cooked together in a curry, making for many possibilities.
Have beef with zucchini or shrimp with lau (bottle gourd), for example. For a dollar extra, add more chile, garlic or ginger, tomato, mint or cilantro. There's also a good selection of vegetable curries, including pumpkin, eggplant, squash, cabbage and pui shak, a type of climbing spinach in the mallow family with a slightly slippery texture, served with basmati or brown rice.
Bangladeshis live on rice and fish, and no fish is more adored than hilsa (also called elish), despite its many small bones. It is a symbol of wealth and fertility, and for wedding feasts, the fish are dressed up, draped in silk and jewels with flower garlands around their gills and lipstick on their lips.
At Heelsha, get the namesake fish (flown in frozen from Bangladesh) curried in an onion and green pepper sauce, smeared in spices and steamed in banana-leaf parcels, served as a steak or whole slathered in spices and roasted.
Other specialties include goat biryani, grilled galda (a lobster-like shrimp) and fish bharta, boiled fish mashed with a little oil, chopped onion and cilantro -- perfect finger food rolled into balls and eaten with rice and tomato bharta (roasted tomato salad).
Meat eaters must try the beef bhuna, browned in oil with an onion- and cumin-based spice sauce, or lamb satkora. This unusual dish is cooked with a sour citrus fruit called satkara or Assam lemon that's similar to sour orange.
Chicken rezala is a rich, tangy chicken dish spiced with cardamom, cinnamon and bay leaves in a yogurt sauce with a hit of lemon juice.
There are also tandoori-blasted kebabs and breads, dals (lentil stews), fresh-squeezed juices, lassi (yogurt drinks) and calming teas such as ginger, lemongrass and cardamom. End with fruit salad or homemade ice cream.
Hours
11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. dailyDetails
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Location
- Current 78.8 °F
- It's a romantic night
- Dine alfresco on Miami Beach
