Every few months, somebody on Long Island asks the internet the same question, and this week it surfaced again on the r/longisland forum: where is the best Indian food in Hicksville? The question keeps coming back because the answer keeps being worth having. No hamlet on the Island has anything like Hicksville's concentration of Indian kitchens, sweet shops and dosa griddles, most of it strung along Broadway and the blocks just off it, and the lineup has quietly gotten better this year.

What follows is not a list of every Indian restaurant in the 11801 zip code. It is six places that answer six different cravings, each of them open and serving as of this week, from a dining room that just arrived to a vegetarian landmark that has been turning out dosas for decades.

Bhaijaan, 294 North Broadway: the night out

The newest name on this list opened this year and does not look like anything else in Hicksville, or much else on Long Island. Bhaijaan styles itself on the golden era of 1960s India, with a dining room built for lingering, a tandoor-driven menu of kebabs and slow mains such as butter chicken and nihari gosht, and a cocktail program that folds Indian ingredients into the drinks. Small plates like tawa keema pao share the menu with black garlic chicken tikka and Amritsari paneer tikka. This is the one you book for an anniversary, or for convincing a skeptic that Indian food can be a special occasion.

House of Dosas, 416 South Broadway: the institution

A long-standing South Broadway fixture, House of Dosas is the reason many Long Islanders ate their first dosa. The kitchen is fully vegetarian and South Indian at its core: crisp rice-and-lentil crepes wrapped around spiced potato, idli, uttapam and sambar that does the quiet work. It is a family operation with modest prices and no interest in trends, which is exactly why it has outlasted them. Note that it is closed Mondays.

New Chilli & Curry, 106 Woodbury Road: the Indo-Chinese specialist

Ask the loudest partisans in any Long Island food thread and this is the name they type in all caps. New Chilli & Curry works the Indo-Chinese lane, the hybrid cuisine of Hakka-style noodles, chilli chicken and pepper shrimp alongside the tandoori and curry standards, and the dining room fills accordingly. It is a small space with a devoted following, so expect a wait at peak hours. Closed Mondays, with a midday break between lunch and dinner service on the days it is open.

Diwan, 405 South Broadway: the full spread

Diwan is the big-occasion room on South Broadway, a white-tablecloth Indian restaurant and bar that also happens to run one of the area's better-known weekday lunch buffets, which the restaurant lists at $18.95 a person from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. The menu runs long: tandoor, karahi, biryanis, a deep vegetarian bench and fresh breads. It is open seven days, which matters in a town where several of its rivals go dark early in the week.

Mithaas, 217 Bethpage Road: sweets and chaat

Half the point of an Indian food town is what happens between meals, and Mithaas covers it: a counter of milk sweets, gulab jamun and jalebi alongside a menu of chaat, samosas and other vegetarian snacks, most of it costing single digits. Come here after dinner somewhere else, or instead of dinner entirely, and leave with a box of sweets you did not plan on.

Kiran Palace, 67 East Old Country Road: the neighborhood curry house

Kiran Palace has been feeding Hicksville from Old Country Road for years, a straightforward North Indian menu of curries, biryanis and tandoori plates, with samosa chaat that regulars order on repeat. It is the unfussy weeknight answer on this list. One quirk to know: it closes on Tuesdays, the mirror image of the Monday closers on Broadway.

How to work the town

A practical map: the South Broadway corridor holds the institutions, House of Dosas and Diwan within two blocks of each other. North Broadway now has the showpiece in Bhaijaan. Woodbury Road hides the cult favorite, and the sweets live on Bethpage Road. Monday is the worst night to improvise in Hicksville and Tuesday is not much better, so check before you drive.

The real answer to the question Long Island keeps asking is that there is no single best Indian restaurant in Hicksville. There is a best one for tonight, and it depends on whether tonight calls for a dosa, a buffet, chilli chicken or a cocktail under low light. The town has all four within a five-minute drive of the train station, which is precisely why the question never stays answered for long.