I know from how many people have asked me about it and how crowded it’s been during two recent visits. And after trying it myself, it’s fair to say, the excitement is warranted.

The restaurant opened Jan. 14 on Commerce Drive, west of the Beltline at Mineral Point Road, across from Menards, in the former Happy Wok. 

The dining room is spacious, with red, cushiony, comfortable seating, and some cool, curved booths. The menu is overwhelmingly large, so two friends and I were glad we found our way to the fish tawa ($15) from the appetizer menu. It was an absolute marvel.

The dish comes in pod chapa form, as three marinated and sautéed filets, or in karimeen form, as a full fish with its head on. We ordered it the first way, and the flaky tilapia was treated with a complex spice mixture and blackened.

We were more mixed on another starter, vadas ($7), which were three savory donut-type pastries made with gram, or chickpea flour. It was the right amount for our party and the vada were a nice vehicle for two great sauces and a little silver bowl of dal.

In contrast, a thin masala omelet ($5), loaded with onions, was fine, but didn’t stand out.

Looking back, I should’ve talked my friends out of ordering the goat nanjilnadu ($19), which the menu describes as a signature goat curry. The meat was gristly and there was lots of bone.

“I didn’t know how hard it would be to debone a goat, but I’d rather not do it on the plate because it’s kind of messy,” said one friend. The other stuck up for it and deemed the meat tender. We all liked the tomato-based curry sauce.

The garlic naan ($4), loaded with fresh, chopped garlic, was a huge hit.

On an earlier visit, a friend and I ordered two soups because so many of the appetizers were deep-fried and we wanted a healthy meal.

I’ve only ordered soup once before in an Indian restaurant and it was such a big mistake, I’ve never done it again.

The sweet corn soup ($5), described on Rajni’s menu as “comforting and delicious,” tasted like somebody dumped canned soup in a bowl with its accompanying water, and heated it up.

The other soup we ordered, milagu rasam, also billed as comforting, was anything but. The menu said the south Indian soup is known for its spicy, tangy flavors. And that it was — to a surprising degree, causing my friend to cough his way through it.

Still, it was compelling, so we wound up sharing the soups and alternating back and forth between the fiery and the mild.

“I can handle spice, but this is almost over the top,” my friend said as he pulled out two whole peppers.

He found the palak paneer ($15) nice and rich, with cubes of Indian cheese buried in creamed spinach, but I compare all restaurant versions to the Trader Joe’s frozen dinner, which I’ve been eating for probably 15 years. And at $3.99, it’s an unbeatable meal. Rajni’s was fine, but is keeping my quest of finding a better one alive.

The chicken milagu kozhambu ($15) was the highlight of this initial meal at Rajni. Described as a south Indian-style curry with black pepper, it had loads of delicious shredded chicken in a delightful, light sauce with subtle flavors and cilantro on top.

My friend was disappointed that the restaurant doesn’t serve alcohol because he would’ve liked a beer. But he made do, splitting my tall, beautifully presented mango lassi ($4), one of the best uses of drinkable yogurt.

Rajni doesn’t have a lunch buffet, but the thali is as good a value and only available at lunchtime for dine-in.

The non-vegetarian “business” version ($17), offered Monday through Thursday, was a bonanza of a meal: a round metal platter with rice; papadum, the crisp flatbread; and a chapati flatbread in the middle.

Surrounding it were 10 silver cups with various chicken, vegetable and rice dishes, plus soups, hot sauce, plain yogurt, and ashoka halwa, a baby-food textured dessert made with mung dal, sugar and ghee. The big surprise was that one of the cups was filled with four pieces of the unforgettable fish tawa from my earlier visit.

After a few attempts to find out who owns Rajni and getting nowhere by phone or email, I returned to the restaurant and discovered that the owner, Jeyakumar “Jey” Marichamy, lives in Parsippany, New Jersey, where he opened his first Rajni in 2011.

He said he opened a second, in Suwanee, Georgia, an Atlanta suburb, a month before Madison’s. He said he did market research and started working on the Madison restaurant in September.

Marichamy said he has a friend in Madison who’s a scientist and that’s what led him to open the restaurant here. He said there’s no authentic south Indian food in Madison and Indians who live here have to travel to Chicago to get it.

I told him that’s patently false, to which he said, “OK, OK, OK,” then clarified with “not a lot of good south Indian food … There’s not a lot of good variety of south Indian food.” Then he talked up all the dosas Rajni serves.

However, Rajni isn’t the only restaurant in Madison to serve the thin, savory crepes which seemed popular when I was there.

Marichamy, who owns the restaurant with two local partners he declined to name, said the restaurant is named for the Indian movie star Rajinikanth.

“The name in India has magnetic power,” he said. “They say that the word has magic in it.”

And I say some of the food at Rajni has magic in it. I’m thinking of you, fish tawa.