Cinnamon Indian Cuisine — Restaurant in Midland

First time in. Small restaurant. Fast food vibes. Server was super awesome, very friendly and knowledgeable. You could really tell he has a passion for this food and his employer. He talked about how she uses fresh ingredients and makes everything herself. The food was very good and had great depth of flavor but it missed the mark for me on a couple points. The chicken used was not great it was mostly thigh meat. I don’t like dark meat usually and I could taste the chicken flavor through the spices. The texture of the chicken was off for me as well. I’d prefer a chicken breast and tenderloin be used. I had the butter chicken which had great spices but it just was not creamy enough and I could taste a lot of the tomato. At the table also was a clay pot chicken tikka. Firstly it didn’t come in a clay pot it came on a cast iron fajita skillet. While the flavor was good there was no sauce and it was just super oily. The samosas were really good some of the best I’ve had. Both chutneys were good usually I don’t like the sweet one but this one was pretty good. The naan was also good. The rice was over cooked. Not my first go to for Indian food...

Warning: the medium spice level is VERY hot!!!!! Almost so hot you can’t eat it. We ordered the Chicken 65 as an appetizer and it was bland and dry. We expected it to come with a sauce or something, but it was just chicken on a plate. We ordered this appetizer medium but it was not spicy at all. So, thinking the medium was not hot we got our entrees medium. It was so hot we could barely eat it!!! Other than it being too spicy, it was very good and flavorful. We ordered the Chicken Tikka Masala, Butter Chicken, and Chicken Biryani. I thought the chicken biryani was too dry, so I probably wouldn’t get it again. We also ordered the garlic butter naan and it was very good. We tried the mango lassi and it was interesting but yummy. The waiter was ok and not very friendly and didn’t even warn us about the spice level. Inside the restaurant they were playing netflix, so...

Took five dishes to go. The food was ready in fifteen minutes. The Dum Aloo Kash ordered medium spicy was the star - a creamy brown sauce with warming spices over something the looks like a hambone but is actually half a huge potato ball formed around a cheese and nut mixture that has a texture like sausage and a flavor like nothing else. The Channa Batura is like a circus elephant ear (not drowning in cinnamon sugar) with a chickpea gravy. The Kashmiri Naan is another surprise, typical naan but with sweet spices and a little bit of dried fruit inside (not sugary sweet). The butter chicken is a pretty standard recipe, but done very well. The Reshmi Kebab has a very refreshing marinade, but it was a little too heavily salted this time. There are many more unusual items on the menu I look...