Honest Indian Restaurant — Restaurant in Sydney

Are you looking for something to excite those taste buds? How about Honest Indian? This is a vibrant Indian restaurant in Bella Vista with brilliant vegetarian Indian food, street food style. The food is awesome, full of wonderful flavours and textures.

Honest Indian is a casual diner in the industrial precinct of Bella Vista. The dining space is bright, with splashings of colour and some cool Indian pop art that makes you feel happy.

The restaurant is packed with families on our day of visit, everyone is happy and lively and enjoying their meals, many sharing all the plates. Staff are super friendly and efficient, the owner in particular is so welcoming.

We take a look at the menu which has lots of menu items we’ve never tried or heard of before, so we get advice from the staff. We order lots of their popular dishes to share and are grateful to have been given top advice. In addition to the Indian Street food, there’s some Indian takes on western classics like pizza and sandwiches, and these seemed to be popular amongst diners.

We start with an Indian Street food inspired dish, the pani puri. This dish we do know well and order it whenever we see it on a menu. It consists crisp chickpea flour cups filled with sweet date chutney and a choice of two types of flavoursome liquids to fill the chickpea cups with, a spicy one and a refreshing mint cilantro water. Start with an edible cup of spicy liquid, then folllow with refreshing cool cilantro and mint.

Another dish we are fond of here is the cheese bhaji pav, a famous dish for the textile workers of Mumbai, a delectable potato mashed curry served with soft toasted bread rolls, cheap and delicious. Dip your bread in the curry, or fill it. It isn’t too spicy and the flavour is so damn tasty.

The Paneer 65 was one that most interested us. A sothern Indian inspired option of battered spiced paneer(cottage cheese) spiced with mustard seeds curry leaves and a spiced sauce that is beautifully caramelised. The sauce made the cheese an incredible bright red / orange colour (similar to the look of tandoori). This was phenomenal and incredibly moreish; with the fried cheese with a beautiful spicy marinade, it would be pretty hard not to enjoy this. It was a flavour bomb and was our favourite dish of the day.

Bhel from the western regions of India is something new to us, the first we have tried this. It is a savoury puffed rice salad, with tomatoes, Spanish onion, crisp noodles pomegranate, with a spiced seasoning. It is probably more carbs than a salad as such, crunchy and packed with noodles and crackers. The seasoning, onion and tomatoes make it quite refreshing.

There were also some dishes inspired from Chinese cuisine, such as the Schezwan fried rice. It came incorporated with Indian food via Chinese people visiting India and they saw a blending of flavours. It has resulted in a vibrant dish, bright Orange / red in colour. This also has a good spice kick without being over the top.

We of course wash this down with a Mango lassi, always the perfect accompaniment to an Indian meal. We finished with a masala tea, a popular drink to have with Indian food.

Despite being vegetarian, the food was quite filling. Of you are after a cheap and tasty casual meal and are in the Bella Vista area, make sure you check...

Dishonest Vegetarian. Negative rating if It were allowed. Worst Experience ever. Ruined a Family member’s Birthday. We were left hungry and did not want to order more. Read below. We Came in for a family meal for 4. Meals worth $88 were paid for upon arrival at the restaurant, paid via debit card via the app.

The meals took close to 1 hour to arrive. And that too, 1 portion at a time. Portions sizes were very small for the money. Bakri “Pizza” for $14 – a small saucer/plate of what appeared to be defrosted Bakri bread with cheese and tomato paste. Ridiculous and a rip off.

Other customers who arrived much later than us where served earlier than us. How could this be possible?

The excuse given was that there was an IT issue. How could there be an IT issue for 1 order?

Staff and even the owner could not answer and did not even care or show any remorse. They claim they were doing back orders. Why do back orders when client facing customers are neglected?

2 cans of soft drink were initially provided as “compensation”. What can a family of 4 do with 2 cans of soft drink when they are waiting for hot meals? After further complaints a refund was promised. A refund was promised which was claimed to be processed in 2 days. Its now 10 days later and I am yet to be refunded. Just because a refund was offered does not mean customers should kept in the dark on how this business conducted itself.

The whole business model works on the principal of collecting money first, then providing the goods. They’d rather process menulog orders than serve face to face customers. It’s a lose/lose situation for customers. The business always has the upper...

This restaurant is situated in the heart of Bellavista. It is growing rapidly to be a favorite hangout for people of all age groups.

The decor is a stunning mix of ethnic and funky Indian pop portraits with a mix of luxury, and modernity look. Every table provides a clear view of the chef working in the kitchen.

The menu offers a wide variety of delicious and mouthwatering Indian Street and Indo-Chinese food that will appeal to youngsters and adults alike. I had chef's special Bhaji-Pav with Paneer-65, as well as Masala Thumbs-Up. Mrs tried Tawa-Pulav and Masala Chai. They were all exquisite. The Pav as soft as a sponge and Paneer-65 was just out of this world with the crispy n soft texture.

Everything we ate was fresh and delicious. The chefs use the best quality ingredients to produce dishes that are simply delightful. The restaurant also offers a wonderful drink menu, and they offer one of the best Masala Chai which will take you back to your golden days in India. The food is not pricey but surely worth sampling.

The service was of the highest quality. The greeting when entering the premise...the waiters taking and serving the orders showed a very high level of hospitality. The owner seemed very warm and thoughtful. He came around to check on our experience and seemed to be authentically engaged.

I highly recommend this restaurant. The food is delicious and the atmosphere is brilliant. Will visit again.

P.s finally a restaurant which would make the arrogant Chatkas run for...