Taking up your editor's kind suggestion, I'm on assignment to find out, Seinfeld-style, what's the deal with Milon and Panna II—two nearly identical Indian restaurants on the west side of First Avenue between 5th and 6th Streets. The pair are better known by sight than name: One building about a half-flight of steps above street level, the space demarcated symmetrically vertical, such that each spot has an off-center entrance and an enormous window illumined blood red by hundreds of decorative lights shaped like chili peppers and strings of otherwise typical multi-color Christmas lights. Milon is on the left, and came first (1982); Panna II on the right, opened in 1989. At the top of the steps stand two Indian men in rumpled tuxedos. As soon as they intuit that you are thinking Indian, one will start screaming at you in no uncertain terms that you should eat at his restaurant, and that also you should ignore the other guy next to him who is screaming pretty much the same. The longer you delay your decision, the louder and more furious they will become, the more they will stumble down the steps and grab you inappropriately, the more they will multiply in number. Ask which one of them knows how to make this obscure little dish I like to call Chicken Tikka Marsala and watch, as I did, three more men from each restaurant run out and scream out the terms of their hospitality just inches from your face, temporarily ignoring their customers already inside, some of whom may/may not have begun to feel like they got got.

(Beneath Milon and Panna II is another Indian-style spot, Royal Bangladesh, important to note because Royal also has a barker outside. He will follow you up the steps to Milon/Panna II trying to talk you out of M/P2. I've been to Royal but doubt I'm allowed back; something about waiting for my food for two hours, then self-pixellating to the point that I started undoing all the seat covers and telling everyone in the restaurant that my name was "Winevester.")

Just so there are no hard feelings when you get to page the last, I should say upfront I don't plan on deeming one place better than the other. Reason one is I think it's impossible; food-wise the places are too similar and have too many items for me to be definitive. I'd also want to stop pretending that Indian food doesn't have its own North/South/Bengali variants, and I'd need a girlfriend who'd tolerate the dermatological and gastroenterological strain this fare puts on a food anti-critic, and I'm guessing that's not going to happen. Reason two is neither Milon nor Panna II serve what I'd call good Indian food. I have a preference between the two but if I'm really hankering for Indian food, I'll go to Mitali East on 6th Street, and if I'm really hankering for really good Indian food, I'll go uptown to somewhere like Tabla. It's the same thing in Philly when somebody asks me to choose Geno's or Pat's; for cheesesteaks I'd go nowhere but Delassandro's on Henry Ave.