This is one of those reviews where the food and service are ranked so differently. The food was delicious and extremely tasty, while the service was confusing and slow. So in the end I had to rank in somewhere in the middle because both elements are important when dining out.
It was the week of Diwali, the Indian Festival of Lights, so Aarti and I decided to get Indian food. We ended up at this place because they delivered to Aarti's office frequently for lunch and she had mentioned that the food was excellent but that she had never had a sit down meal there. After doing a little bit of internet research to make sure it wasn't a scary take out place, I eagerly made my way up to Hell's Kitchen. The place was rather empty when I first got there around 7:45 but it definitely started to fill up as the night progressed. The menu is quite extensive but they have a great prix fixe deal where you could get at any time of the night: one appetizer off the list, a choice of almost any entree (seafood would cost you more) and your choice of roti or naan for $19.95. Considering many of the entrees alone $14+, I thought this was a pretty good deal. I started with the vegetable samosa to start and for my entree I got the Chicken Tikka Saag and garlic naan. Aarti got the yellow daal for her entree and then we also got a side of the paneer makhani ($10.95) to share. Our vegetable samosa came out quickly and they were your typical tasty veggie samosa. Then this is where things started to go downhill. After 20 minutes of waiting for our entrees, our waiter came back and was like "uh, so what did you order again?" Bad sign. We repeated our order to him and it was clear that either he put in the wrong order or just never put it in in the first place. He apologized profusely but that didn't help the fact that we were starving and that now our food would take even longer to come out. We both ordered a mango lassi to curb our hunger as we watched everyone else who had come in after us get their food. Finally after almost 40 minutes of waiting our food comes out and I was ready to dive in head first. We had also ordered a side of raita to go with our meal and alas that was missing from our order. That took another 15-20 minutes for them to bring out and again, they were very apologetic about it, but I was starting to lose my cool.
But on to the food. It's extremely satisfying and reminds me of how much I do love Indian food. It was clear that the paneer was made with full fat cream and butter but that is why it was so incredibly delicious and addictive. The saag was also quite good with the fresh spinach and chunks of tender chicken buried in it. The naan was soft and pillowy and then briyani rice was a great combination with all the saucy food. In the end, the food was worth waiting for and it totally hit the spot. The great thing about Indian food is that it's usually a lot of food and we ended up taking home almost everything and it lasted another 2 meals for me. In the end, the food totally made up for the fact that the service was more than lack luster and I appreciated that they were very apologetic and didn't charge us for the mango lassis but they do need to get their act together in order to me to ever rank them higher. Total bill: $36/pp with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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