One complaint I often hear about Baltimore’s dining scene is that there’s not enough good Indian food in the city.

Here’s one answer: Unavu, a new ghost kitchen in Charles Village serving Southern Indian cuisine for pickup or delivery.

On the menu are dishes you won’t find at many, if any, other Indian restaurants in the area. Look for ginormous golden dosas made from freshly ground lentils, and chicken kothu parotta featuring moist, flaky flatbread that’s been chopped into bits and transformed through alchemy and seasoning into one of southeast India’s favorite spicy street foods.

And when I say spicy, I mean spicy. While the online order form allows customers to choose their preferred heat level, even the mildest options might have you reaching for a box of tissues and a mango lassi to cool your tongue.

“We are trying to tone it down,” said owner Dev Stephen.

I kind of hope they don’t. The charm of Unavu, which opened just a few months ago, lies in its unique and seemingly untranslated offerings. Stephen prides himself on making everything from scratch, presenting a handful of cardamom pods and cinnamon sticks as evidence that he and Unavu’s chefs grind all their own spices.

It makes for warming and richly seasoned, but somehow light-tasting fare so satisfying that I can’t seem to peruse the website without placing yet another order to The Banner newsroom. (My coworkers, who got to share my haul, had zero complaints about this development.)

For now, Unavu operates out of the Charm City Food Co. commissary kitchen at 416 E. 30th St., just across the street from Peabody Heights Brewery. Stephen says he sometimes brings samples over to his neighbors’ taproom. Moving forward, he would like to operate Unavu as a sit-down restaurant. “I’m not looking for anything fancy,” he said, just a space with a few tables and chairs and, of course, a massive kitchen.

The idea for the business came about as Stephen traveled the world for his job as an IT consultant. Everywhere he looked, he tried to find food that reminded him of his home in Southern India — the kind of simple and nourishing meals he had prepared with his grandma and his mom. He always came up short.

After moving to Baltimore, he decided to take matters into his own hands and opened Unavu, which means “food” in Tamil, Stephen’s native tongue. He recruited Bala Murugan Shanmugam, a pastry chef living in Chicago, along with Prakash Raj, a master of the griddle, to lead the kitchen. All three agreed: If they were going to make homestyle South Indian food, they needed to do it right, no matter how much the cost.

Stephen said he’s struggling to keep up with the high price of ingredients — not to mention the 30% fee charged by delivery apps like DoorDash and Grubhub — and encourages customers to order directly from the restaurant’s website. The eatery is still finding its groove; several times when I ordered, I found unexpected substitutions when they were out of a certain dish. But for food this good, I’m willing to be flexible.

In addition to Unavu, Stephen and his small staff operate Curry, another ghost kitchen concept with a menu that emphasizes the rich dishes of India’s northern region, such as chicken tikka masala and palak paneer.

Owing to patterns in migration, many Indian restaurants around the globe actually serve food from the Punjab region, located in the north of the subcontinent, with dishes loaded with heavy cream and clarified butter. In Baltimore, Indian restaurants are often run by Nepalese chefs and business owners, who often incorporate dishes from their home country, like momo.

The cuisine of South India is a whole different story, according to Stephen. Cooks are less likely to use butter and ghee, making for food that’s lighter in texture, with flavors that range from tangy to sweet and, yes, super-spicy. It’s those dishes that Stephen wants to introduce diners to, with perhaps fortuitous timing: Restaurant experts predict that regional Indian cuisine will be a top food trend for 2026.

For now, after just a few months in operation, Unavu has found a receptive audience among local diners craving a taste of South India. One customer wrote online that they discovered the spot while visiting Baltimore from out of town with a picky 5-year-old. “Even as a takeout only spot, it delivers the warmth and comfort of a true home-cooked meal,” they wrote. An elderly customer told Stephen he was brought to tears by the food, which he said reminded him of his own grandma’s cooking.

It was the highest compliment Stephen could imagine.