Bay View’s Chettinadu House Is a Winner

Chettinadu House, 2258 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. Photo taken Feb. 5, 2026 by Sophie Bolich.

Sadly, Milwaukee will lose the Walker’s Point restaurant Ruta’s Fresh Indian Fare at the end of April, but nearby in Bay View, we have Chettinadu House, an Indian restaurant that recently opened on South Kinnickinnic Avenue. While Ruta’s was small and intimate, Chettinadu House occupies a much larger space in the former Sabor Tropical that closed in 2025. However, a note to the owners of Chettinadu House: It is time to change the prominent signage on the restaurant that still reads Sabor.

We learned from our server that the owners closed a restaurant in Madison called Thalaivas Indian Cuisine and brought the same menu to Milwaukee — literally, the same cuisine and same physical menu that has the old name on the front of it. Our server said the name means “boss.”

It’s a lengthy one. I counted 16 pages with soup, appetizers, noodles, non-veg curries, thali, vegetable curries, biryani, South Indian, parotta, Chinese, dosa, tandoori, bread, drinks, desserts and a kids section.

It’s hard to know where to start when presented with such an immense menu. My companion and I stayed close to the familiar and ordered butter chicken masala from the non-vegetarian curries and vegetarian korma, another curry. We followed our server’s recommendation and ordered medium heat, a wise suggestion, as both dishes left a happy glow — enough heat, but not too much.

The large pieces of marinated chicken white meat in the butter chicken were impossibly tender — no knife needed — and infused with the flavors of the marinade, ginger, garlic and a hint of lemon. The tomato-yogurt sauce, a buttery, rich, succulent companion to the chicken, is the reason this dish is a popular choice in Indian cuisine. It came in a pot with rice on the side and easily provided a second meal at home.

The vegetarian korma, another curry, was made with yogurt, cream, spices and lots of vegetables, including cauliflower, green beans, onions, potatoes, peas and carrots. It, too, was buttery and succulent and left a warm glow in the mouth. Like the butter chicken, it was served with a side of basmati rice, and, like the butter chicken, there was plenty for another meal at home.

You will want to order a mango lassi with your meal. Mango lassis and Indian food are twinned like peanut butter and jelly or ham and Swiss because the cool lassi provides an ideal counterpoint to the spicy heat in Indian cuisine. At Chettinadu House, unlike the lassi at some Indian restaurants, it is not a slushy. It’s thick, tastes of mango and has a tart undertone.

We also paired naan with our meals and found it was thin, crisp, with bits of char from the oven. In a word, delicious. We chose the butter naan but if you love extreme heat, order the bullet naan topped with chopped spicy green chilis.

For dessert, you can order gulab jamun, deep-fried dough balls that were drenched in sugar syrup. They were surprisingly light and very tasty.

On a second visit, we stayed with the familiar: boneless chicken biryani, tandoori chicken and, for my heat-averse companion, chicken with noodles. The marinade for the tandoori chicken had plenty of red chili powder, hence the bright red color and the spicy heat. Half a chicken was cooked in a tandoor oven and roasted to juicy perfection.

The chicken biryani burst with flavors from layers of saffron rice, red onion pieces and chicken thigh meat. It was topped with one hard-boiled egg and came with a cooling raita yogurt sauce and a thick, spicy, tangy sauce that hinted of coconut and ginger. Together they made the dish a memorable biryani.

The chicken and noodles dish was just that: crisp pieces of deep-fried chicken, noodles, vegetables, and a mild sauce that pleased my heat-averse companion.

At Chettinadu House, you will find an impressive list of Indian dishes, some familiar and some not, but one thing is certain: The food is authentic, healthy and consistently delicious. Milwaukee is fortunate to have a vast variety of ethnic restaurant choices, and you can add Chettinadu House to your list when you want tasty Indian cuisine.

On the Menu

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The Rundown

• Location: 2258 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.
• Phone: 414-249-5837
• Hours: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Tue-Sun
• Neighborhood: Bay View
• Website: https://www.chettinaduhousewi.com

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