Toddy Indian Restaurant — Restaurant in Melbourne

Ok, never expected this would turn out to be like this. Here's my experience on my first visit.

Reached on time and were greeted well and took out seats on the table.

Here's my conversation for the rest of the evening:

We are deciding our drinks and also some entrèe to go with it. Here comes the owner to our table

Owner: Can I get you some drinks while you look at the menu Me: Sure

We ordered our drinks and asked if we could get something to eat with it like starters. He said yeah but our portions are very small as we are not a normal curry house.

Not sure what he meant by that but we continued with ordering a couple of starters and then he goes, best you have your drinks 1st and order the food together for starters and mains. (Strange for someone to say that).

He went away and after 10 mins gives us our drinks but 1 was a wrong order out of the 4 we ordered. We asked if we could get the one we ordered instead. The owner didn't realise he made a mistake and said best have the one that he gave us as it is really good. We insisted to replace it and he then said he will get it it, we can have the one he initially got for us as well.

At this stage we ordered the starters as well and said we will order the mains later once we enjoy our drinks and starters.

I also asked for another drink and asked if it could be freshly made instead of mixing the cordial lime juice (we ordered a shikanjvi). He acknowledged that the 1st one was made of cordial but he would have made it fresh if we asked before. I asked if we could have another one of it but this time freshly made. He replied by saying that he doesn't have time to make it as he is very busy. (What kind of restaurant owner says that to their customer???)

Anyways, our starters order arrived and was okay (2.5 out of 5)

We almost finished our starters but kept looking for the drink that was initially ordered (the one the owner mixed up in the beginning). He came to our table to collect the plates and we asked if we could have our drink now? He asked if we still want it? (Ofcourse we do if we have asked for it at least 2wice).

Now we all got really agitated and started looking for other restaurants to have a proper dinner as the service was really poor.

I got up and walked to the counter to pay. I said that'll be all for tonight for us and we won't be ordering mains for the night. He asked why? I said not enough options for us to eat. He replied by saying that we should have looked at the menu before booking and said it's not right to be leaving in the middle of the table booking as he had to pay commission to "TheFork" and it'll be out of his pocket. I said we booked by calling the restaurant itself and not through any middle company and we'll pay for what we ordered as it is a 'a la carte' menu we chose not set. He shook his head, rolled his eyes.

Now why would.someone in a good mind do that? Either he was having a bad day or was just not upto the mark to handle a restaurant business at all. Whatever may the reason be, this is just not acceptable in the hospitality industry at all according to the standards set...

Sometimes I stumble across a restaurant purely because of good aesthetics, and just hope that the food will "match", and I'm often right, and was again tonight. I wanted to try it here because it looks great at night driving past and I love Indian food, so I didn't think I could go wrong. So glad we tried this and you must too.

It's beautiful and spacious inside, and one thing it has that other Indian restaurants don't, is nice big tables. We were seated promptly (albeit in hard and a bit uncomfortable chairs) and the manager/owner(?) told us the specials and explained the entrees. Everything sounded delicious. I ordered the Smashed Samosa for starters and it was not only excellent in taste, but one of the most gorgeously presented dishes I've had. It was really good, although a tiny bit on the hot side. For main, I had the Butter Chicken and Garlic Naan, and shared rice. Everything came out so beautifully presented. The flavours were so good, and the actual dishes themselves were great and different to other Indian restaurants. You actually eat out of the dish the main comes in, rather than dishing it out onto plates. The only minor things I wasn't a fan of, was that the chicken was on the bone rather than boneless pieces, but it was easy to eat, and tasted so dang good! It could have done with a little more sauce, as there didn't seem enough for the dish plus naan, but really, this is just nitpicking.

Overall ... I would HIGHLY recommend trying Toddy. The service was quick and friendly, and the food aesthetically and palatally pleasing. It's well priced and a lot of parking outside. Give this a go NOW if you like Indian food...

This has been our go to takeaway Indian spot for around 3 years. The quality and size of the meals have not varied once - always utterly delicious (a cut above your usual Indian fare) and very reasonably sized serves where a curry and rice gives me another leftover meal the following day so great value.

When you eat at the restaurant itself however be prepared for an entirely elevated experience where the food is stunningly presented (have eaten in twice now between lockdowns and the presentation has remained thoroughly consistent) and the menu offers dishes with a really modern twist that you can’t get in the same way on the takeaway menu - think smashed samosas, smoked eggplant and onion rings that are presented and prepared in a way that makes you feel more like you are at a fine dining indian fusion restaurant. The food just gets better and more delicious.

The service is also excellent - extremely attentive yet discrete; constantly keeping on top of refilling water and drinks where required, meals come out in a very timely and well thought out order, plates are cleared promptly after finishing meals.

The drinks are also very reasonably priced which makes for a nice change to some places where it’s hard to find a drink for under $10.

Highly recommended. Thanks for the delicious meal tonight! My family all loved it and had...