Halims Indian Taj Restaurant — Restaurant in Brisbane City

The first thing that I noticed when we arrived at the restaurant at 6.30pm on a Fri night, was a handwritten note pinned to the back wall that said “Staff Wanted”. My heart sank. That was Red Flag No 1: this place is understaffed and service is going to be Slow. P.R. lesson 101: Don't let on to customers that you're short staffed. The second thing that I noticed was that four or five people were queued up at the front counter waiting for their takeaway meals. Red Flag No 2. Service is going to be Super slow, because these guys will be attended to first! And that queue just got longer and longer as the evening went on, and to it were added a bunch of delivery drivers as well, I assume from outfits like DoorDash and Uber eats, also queued up and waiting for their orders. Result: In House diners have to wait while these takeaway orders are dealt with. This is not the first time that I have encountered a situation, where a restaurant is overwhelmed with take-away orders and their in-house patrons are basically left to rot.

At Halims, it took about 15 minutes before our order was taken, then around 35 minutes until our entrée plate was brought out, and another 25-30 minutes before the main meals made their appearance. Now, I understand that small restaurants need to get their revenue from wherever they can and that overreliance on take-away orders arose from the Covid lockdowns, when serving take-out meals was the only way to survive. But, hell, these places need to now figure out how to deal with it without compromising the service rendered to their in-house diners, who were once their bread and butter. This joint clearly hasn’t figured that out yet, so what should have been a fun and relaxing night out, turned into a frustrating and annoying evening mostly spent watching a stream of people queue up at the counter, then walking away with their meals while we sat twiddling our thumbs.

To make matters worse, the staff member who took our order was clearly untrained and inept, with poor English skills, and unable to take a simple order of two banquets, one with chicken and one with lamb, without having to defer to other staff members for help.

But wait, there’s more… No, they don’t even serve alcohol here, so the refreshing beer that I was looking forward to, was not to be. Strange isn’t it, that I cannot purchase a beer or a glass of wine to enjoy with my meal, presumably because this joint doesn’t have a “licence” to sell alcohol to adults, or they choose not to.

Then there were the toilets, or lack of them. When I asked where they were, I was given a rather complicated set of directions to take. There being no toilets on site, patrons need to exit the restaurant and walk right around the complex to the car park, which is where they are. I would never have found them, because they’re virtually impossible to see, being right at the back, in a dark corner of the car park. Lucky for me though, someone had left the door to the male toilet open with the lights on. There are two toilets, a male one and a female one, both dirty, unappetising and with neither soap nor hand towels and not even a hand dryer. The ladies was so grotty that my wife couldn’t use it.

Altogether, an unhappy experience, and we won’t be rushing...

This is the second time we have tried Halims Indian Taj Restaurant. The first being an uber delivery that was epic. The food was so good the first time. The family and I wanted to go and dine in and get the dune in experience and I have to say the food was even better. We ordered a feast like no other so much so that we had to get several take away containers as there was soo much food left over. The beautiful thing was they listened to everything and catered to our requirements. We asked if we can have it not too spicy but have the flavours which they did to the point that my four year old loved her first butter experience and she had two major servings and my son 10 months old tried chicken 65 and even with a little spice he had several bites and they both loved their mango 🥭 lassie I could go on and on highly recommend for families with kids and even work events. Also is a halal restruant so if you have that requirements your set as well. The only improvement I would say they need is that they have to have a better bigger sign so you don't get confused with the Indian restaurant next to them. Also all restruants in this strip do not have disability access there are steps with no hand rails. Other than these 2 small issues it's a...

Truly average. Not worth the price.

I have eaten around at several Indian restaurants and this place was disappointing. To begin with the service was average. No one was at the cashier when we arrived. We had to make a bit of noise before someone came to seat us. After we were seated and had decided our meals, once again we struggled to get someone to take our order. There was a lady behind the counter wiping some dishes we signaled to her several times but were ignored. Only after a waiter who brought food to another table came out of the kitchen were we able to get our orders taken.

The mains arrived surprisingly fast, before the bread, we were waiting quite a while before the bread arrived. This leads me to believe that the curries were either from a warmer or just quickly reheated. The quality of the food was below average in general. The paratha was just an oily Naan. The garlic Naan was just regular Naan smeared with mince garlic out of a jar. The Tikka masala was too sweet, the palak paneer tasted old.

I really am disappointed especially given the price. I've had better Indian food from food courts and it costs a lot less. It's especially disappointing as the chef used to work for the Sheraton in India. I expected...