Maybe it’s the discouraging name, but somehow we critics overlooked the Kebab Factory for almost five years. It’s hard to believe that an Indian restaurant this good opened at about the same time as the long-gone Salamander. Unlike Salamander, the Kebab Factory has found its fans: locals and passersby who like north-Indian food with a difference, and Pakistani students lonesome for "desi" food.

The name isn’t as discouraging as it sounds. A kebab (or in the British, ke-BAAAB, to rhyme with "blab") is not just meat on a stick. Some kebabs are patties; some are even stuffed potatoes. And the factory part might well refer to its rather snazzy industrial design. For a 14-table restaurant in a duplex space, the Kebab Factory is visually all you might expect from the owners of Diva, Bukhara, Café of India, and Kashmir — in the key of postmodern, with brushed-metal wainscoting, high-tech lamps, seeds and herbs laminated into the tabletops, and even a colorful asymmetrical curve in the floor tiles.

All the familiar Indian-restaurant food is offered, but many of the best dishes are unusual or unique. As we get colder, soups become important, and there seem to be several every day besides the regular mulligatawny ($3.95) and chicken shorba ($3.95). One I had at lunch was a cream of spinach with light, dry spicing; another was a spicier creamy tomato soup, like Campbell’s gone to an ashram; a third was mixed vegetable with a nice dry hit of fenugreek or charnushka seeds, and some effective okra.

I actually backed into reviewing the Kebab Factory because it’s near my workplace, and I had become a regular at the lunch buffet ($7.95). While Chinese buffets are usually mediocre, Indian food is mostly stew, and just gets better lingering over heat. The few items that don’t, such as the giant fried samosas, are frequently replenished. What struck me about this buffet was how different it was from one day to the next. The soup always changes, and so do six or eight composed dishes, which might range from curried goat and garlic potatoes to a novel vegetarian stew like raimah mushrooms and chicken in a sauce of fresh fenugreek leaves. There are almost always two kinds of rice pilaf, tandoori chicken, and creamy rice pudding for dessert.

But you can also order single dishes, streamlined versions of the fancy dinner plates, even the signature "Kundan Kaaliya," ($10.95/$16.95), described as "Kebab Factory’s celebration of gold for the royalty: carefully carved mutton pieces in a bed of rich saffron-flavored gravy shimmering with edible gold leaves." Well, the lunch doesn’t have any gold leaf that I can see, but it is a wonderful orange stew of sliced lamb, with nicely layered spices under a top note of, perhaps, cilantro. It’s served with superb white basmati rice done up with a few cumin seeds. Or the "Shikampuri Kebab" ($7.95/$13.95), an atypical kebab that is more like an inside-out cheeseburger. Homemade white cheese is stuffed inside a lamb patty, which is itself flavored like a vegetable dish with spices that have a dry, almost refreshingly bitter finish. It also includes a tomato sauce, to continue the analogy, and a tiny ramekin of maybe three tablespoons of a lively lentil stew to help finish the rice.

At dinner we went to the heart of kebab with a tandoori mixed grill ($15.95). This included examples of chicken in three different treatments: tandoori chicken ($11.95) in the usual crimson marinade; chapli kebab ($11.95) with tangy pomegranate flavor; and pudina tangdi kebab ($11.95), a more savory treatment with the addition of green herbs. Also included were a single underdone shrimp from tandoori jhingha ($19.95), with a light yellow marinade; a piece of lamb adraki champ ($21.95), a gingery and delectable morsel; and rice and dal (soupy small beans). And we mustn’t forget the length of seekh kebab, a spicy lamb sausage ($13.95) with some unusual spice notes.

At the outer limits of kebab, we tried "bharwaan aloo" ($10.95), a tandoori-baked potato-based object like a tall knish, with a stuffing of pomegranate seeds (gray when cooked) and raisins. It comes in a portion of three, which I would consider an appetizer if I weren’t so fond of samosas ($4.95).

The vegetarian options are quite varied, even by the standards of Indian restaurants. I especially liked ghobi char chari ($12.95), a large dish of cauliflower with some peas in a mixture of at least five whole spices (watch out for cinnamon sticks and cardamom) with a tomato sauce that just won’t quit.

A couple of unusual breads as well: sheermal ($3.95), described as a saffron bread, is actually so buttery and light it’s like eating pie crust. And an ajwaini paratha ($3.95) has the intriguing flavor of ajwain or carom seeds, somewhere between celery and caraway, I think.

Drinks should be Indian or domestic beer. There are wines on the list, but you would have to order your food mildly spiced to drink them. Masala tea ($1.95) was clear and spicy one day, rich chai another. Mango lassi ($3.95) has become a dessert. Mine was as thick as a smoothie, and had a nice chunk of ripe mango on the side of the glass.

The usual desserts are also present, along with one clever fusion choice: cassata ($4.95). This is an Italian ice cream, and reminds me how ice cream may have come from India to Italy in medieval times. Cassata is molded with a kind of frozen custard or eggnog flavor on the outside, a slip of chocolate, and an interior of vanilla with candied fruits. It works a lot like the Indian ice cream, kulfi ($3.95), but isn’t spiced with cardamom as kulfi is.

Service was fine on all my visits, but the atmosphere isn’t really developed because the room is simply too small and has too many windows on the street. The background music goes from Indian pop to techno without bothering anyone. My theory is that people are turned away from the nearby Evoo and Dalí restaurants, and wander into the Kebab Factory. If they get hooked as casually as I did, they’ll never have to change the name.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.