Calcutta Cricket Club — Restaurant in Calgary

review summary: not Indian food

Food: 3/10 || Service: 5/10 || Atmosphere: 6.5/10 Dishes I recommend: Papri Chaat

It almost pains me to write this as I try to be as generous as possible in my reviews but….. it just wasn’t Indian food. Someone thinking of eating here should take a quick through the lower-end reviews from the past few months because they capture the sentiments of my experience better than I can.

The atmosphere was okay, but they did turn the lights down so low (~8:30pm?) that I wondered how anyone was able to see their food in front of them.

Our server seemed kind and great at first, and being celiac and Muslim, I appreciated that they easily answered my questions about whether the meat was halal (it was not, but I didn’t expect it to be), and what dishes were gluten-free. They were helpful in navigating the menu and my friend and I liked that they provided recommendations because it was our first time there!

We ordered the papri chaat and the palak paneer with a medium basmati rice together at the beginning. When asked at the time we ordered, we had said that we would be happy to have the papri chaat to start. For some reason, our server understood having “a dish to start” to mean we were going to eat through the whole chaat first before wanting our main course to arrive. We ate the chaat while waiting for our main course to arrive for almost an hour (not wanting to get immediately full on the starter before getting a chance to taste the main dish).

The chaat was genuinely quite tasty, flavourful, well-presented and well-prepared!!! the saving grace of our dining experience here.

My friend and I have never experienced the assumption/service that getting a dish to start meant we wouldn’t want our main course to be arriving to us soon after. We had to flag down our server for them to tell us that they thought we were going to finish the starter before wanting the main dish in front of us (which was not the case, as we had ordered everything together at the beginning)! Strange, truly.

Anyhow, the main reason for my review is… the unsettling main course of the palak paneer. There was such a lack of flavour or anything about the dish that deserved to be considered Indian. I also don’t usually refer to Indian dishes to calling them curries, but it didn’t even taste like curry!!! The paneer seemed to be grilled or deep fried to the point of being hard to eat, and the dish itself….. tasted like spinach water. It arrived with a decorative dry red chili on top that we could tell wasn’t used in the cooking of the dish because of the taste. The basmati rice was passable but overall subpar.

My friend and I were baffled as to how the dish must have been prepared for it to taste as flavourless and disjointed as it did. We were quite hungry when we arrived and we were looking forward to the main course after how tasty the chaat was, but the palak paneer was so dissatisfying and strange that we couldn’t stomach more than our first few bites.

I am disheartened to be writing this review, but it feels wrong to not share my friend and I’s experience (as people who were raised on, frequently eat, and deeply appreciate all kinds of Indian food) about how this wasn’t Indian food.

My friend and I are thankful that the server heard our feedback and dissatisfaction about the dish and offered to take the palak paneer and the rice off our bill. Considering it would’ve been at least $25 for something we didn’t end up being able to eat through after the first few bites, we appreciated that it wasn’t something we would be charged for.

Overall…. just a bizarre experience. All I can say after everything is that I wouldn’t go to this place expecting Indian, unless you’ve never had Indian ever? This isn’t to say Indian food does or even has to taste the same everywhere, or that it has to be spicy, but the palak paneer showed that the food was being prepared without experience of the cuisine, all while being advertised as...

The restaurant is beautifully decorated. Even the toilets are great. The ambiance is good. Music was fine and so was the lighting at 6.30 pm tonight Great service by Hugo 👍👏. The manager was very kind when she came to speak to us ( sorry didn’t ask her name). The Puchka was underwhelming in taste. Looks like they’ve put some dry beans for decoration but PLEASE mention it to the guests that it is not edible! People tend to think that everything on the plate is edible which I think is a reasonable expectation. The aloo chat was not to our liking;needed some more seasoning ( salt). Perhaps you can offer it on the table to people who want a little more of it because it is essential for the Indian inspired dishes to give the tasty punch. When you call it a chat, we expect some red onion and Sev ( fine crunchy vermicelli of gram flour) on it and not big chunks of potato with sauces. I’d like some crunch to balance the large amounts of roast potato in the dish. The chicken Kathi roll was delicious 😋. The eggplant dish was very good even without the yoghurt( my daughter cannot have dairy). The Paneer dumplings were very tasty and the sauce was good too. I’d like it with a little more salt which would have elevated the taste further. The butter chicken sauce was absolutely brilliant; but the chicken cooking was abysmal!! Hard , dry and very unpleasant! Shame because the sauce was fantastic. The cabbage was an interesting dish. We liked the concept but felt it needed another couple of spoons of the sauce for the large size of the cabbage presented( I’m not expecting the cabbage to be floating in the gravy). May be worthwhile suggesting the guests that it goes with the rice than the naan bread( thankfully my wife didn’t order her favourite naan to go with it)The pilau rice was excellent! The garlic naan however was less exciting; felt more like a flat bread with butter on it. I applaud the chef’s attempt at creating some thing new👏. However don’t go there expecting to eat typical Indian food and blame the place for not serving it because it’s is not typical fare and I respect the chef for being creative 👏. However I’ll be critical if you call something chaat, phuchka ( which normally should give an explosion of flavour in your mouth with one bite of it) and not deliver. But clearly he’s got his craft perfect when it comes to the sauces( the...

Definitely overrated. The first sign is that there's only white people in there. I've experienced this before with starbelly down south. It's a place where upper middle class white people can eat ethnic food without having to go to an actual immigrant shop. We all know what I mean by that. And it's not a diss it just is what it is. The dirtier the place the better the food.

All jokes aside I'll get into the actual review. The service was absolutely terrible lol. For a place that markets itself as it does and has all the rave reviews from bloggers etc, me and my partner were really not impressed.

First, before we even sat down, they TWICE told us that there was a reservation right after us. Twice. Never in my life has a restaurant done that and put the pressure on like that. Seriously Calcutta, are you training your service staff to say this?? It's extremely bad form. And annoyed us both from the get go.

Second, we didn't order from the grill section and our waiter was like "are you sure you don't want anything from the grill section??" And proceeded to again pressure us on food selection this time. I'm like uhhhh no this isn't my first rodeo ordering food I can handle it myself thanks. Again, Calcutta, please tell me you aren't training your service staff this way. But. It also speaks to the clientele. White people who've never had Indian food before and literally need to be told what to eat. This was annoying as hell though.

Finally, the food. The papri chaat was unreal. Really good. But the curry was again made for white people. No spice. No heat. Decent flavour and I enjoyed it but.....I have had much better curries at what I'll call real Indian places. I'm sorry if the owner and chef are Indian. I really do. But you guys need to be honest with yourself about who you're making the food for. It's definitely not Indians.

Overall, super disappointing. Definitely won't be going back because there's genuinely better Indian food at many other places. It has its niche in being more upscale I suppose. But...not for me. People are much better off going 20 feet to the right and stepping into ten foot henry.

This is a harsh review but when you have the rep that Calcutta does you have to actually...