INDIAN RESTAURANT—SHAHI MAHAL TERRIGAL — Restaurant in Terrigal

Ok. Come on, at time of posting this place is 4.8 on Google and there are rave reviews all around. They are absolutely not deserving of this score.

This place is really very very ordinary. Butter chicken tastes like it was made basically with peanut butter and sugar. Like a bad satay chicken. Practically inedible.

Garlic naans are thin and papery. Not bready at all.

We ordered a Malabar prawn curry as well, which came out as a fish curry. It was decent tasting so we didn't risk sending it back. The waitress didn't seem to care whatsoever though. You get 1 extra star for this dish

Speaking of the waitress, she's weird. Like came over to our table literally 6 times during the meal asking if everything is okay. Even when we told her it's not - both that the butter chicken tastes like peanuts and our prawn curry was actually a fish curry, she just awkwardly smiled, asked if it was nice (what?) and stood there a few seconds too long before...

The service was fast and good but I'm shocked to see 5 stars in reviews for this restaurant. I'm from the subcontinent region myself, but been living in Sydney for the last 26 years. I can tell you this was perhaps the MOST DISGUSTING chicken I had. I ordered Chicken tikka korma masala and Butter chicken. The chicken was clearly hard/chewy and smelt odd. I had my kids with me and after a couple of bites we didn't know what to do with it. I was very hungry as I hadn't eaten all day and I could have eaten anything but this was so bad. Even my kids stopped eating as they figured it out for themselves. We just dipped out bread and rice in the curry sauce and left the chicken. I walked out in severe distress hoping not to fall sick. Never again. So far the best Indian food I have had has been in a western Sydney restaurant...

We were actually planning to have Thai today and just happened to go here because the Thai place was closed. We did not expect much because normally Indian restaurants modify the recipe and cooking styles to cater locals.

Man, I was wrong. Not only staff were very sweet in the way they served us, the dishes blew us all away. Woah. It has been a while since we had such an awesome Indian food.

We were a group of 6 adults ( 2 vegetarians) and 3 kids. And everyone emptied their plates. ( mango lassi ( you can smell the spices and taste the almonds too) , naans, veg biriyani, egg fried rice, kadai chicken and one delicious mutton dish i don’t remember the name of ) . Finally we had carrot halwa for dessert and it was a cherry on top of the already fantastic evening.

Best way to...