Omar Sacirbey in the Boston Globe, on how the growing number of halal providers and restaurants is giving devout Muslims better dining options:

Chicken tandoori, shami kebab, and lamb korma are among the exotic dishes offered at Grain and Salt, a new South Asian eatery in Allston. But Salim Nguyen, an observant Muslim from Wayland who eats only halal, the Islamic equivalent of kosher, is drawn to Grain and Salt's American fare.

"I can get Indo-Pakistani food at home," says Nguyen, 36, who grew up in Natick on the Indian cooking of his mother. Today he enjoys the Pakistani cuisine his wife prepares. But he's seldom been able to indulge in the foods his non-Muslim friends ate, like burgers, burritos, and chicken tenders because the meat wasn't zabihah -- slaughtered according to Islamic rites -- and thus wasn't halal. "Grain and Salt enabled me to eat Buffalo wings, which I always craved for but I couldn't have."

Started in the SF Bay Area a few years ago as a local resource, zabihah.com is now the biggest guide to halal restaurants, enabling users to submit listings and comment on the food, mark a place as being cheap or expensive, and indicating whether they serve fully or partially halal menus, or if they serve wine.