Palki Restaurant — Restaurant in North Vancouver

I really enjoyed the food here. Had the Non-veg Thali (butter chicken) - it would be nice if they offered you 2 choices of meat, either butter chicken or __. The food was hot (temperature) and spiced nicely, and the naan was very crisp and soft. Well done Chef! I’m giving 3 stars because I was very dissatisfied with the service from the moment I walked in the door. The male server was not friendly with me, and I consider professional service to be service that is also friendly.

When I walked in (I greeted the server, sanitized my hands), and I asked about buffet (as I had eaten buffet here years ago). The server told me the restaurant doesn’t do buffet anymore, but not in a friendly, I’m sorry, we have other great options, kind of voice… but in a speaking down to me, annoyed voice. If it hadn’t been for a woman in the restaurant, who encouraged me to try the Thali, I wouldn’t have bothered staying. The server continued with this unfriendly demeanour, to the point of making me feel uncomfortable.

I am very familiar with South Indian Thali. In my experience it is typically served with pickle or chutney; when I asked about the available pickle the sever sighed audibly at me and answered: “I don’t know ma’am, it’s mixed pickle. I can’t tell you. It’s a mixed pickle.” You don’t know? A server can always go back to the kitchen and ask questions for a customer.

After I placed my lunch order, he took the menus away. He didn’t ask me if I wanted anything to drink. Eventually I asked “excuse me, is there anything warm to drink on the menu?” He said, “what do you want?” I said “Maybe I could look at the menu?” He said “what do you want ? Tea? What kind do you want?” I said, “You know, I feel like you’ve had trouble serving me from the moment I arrived.” The server said “oh, no ma’am, that’s my bad. I thought you knew there wasn’t a buffet anymore. My bad.” He then listed off the hot drink options.

I’d like to say the service improved tremendously after this, but it didn’t. I wouldn’t go back because the service is so important to providing a customer with a good experience. I did not enjoy my experience at...

I grew up in Toronto where there are more Indian restaurants than you can shake a stick at, and a large majority of them offer All You Can Eat as standard. So I absolutely adore Indian cuisine (pizza with butter chicken as a dipping sauce, do it), my father and I would regularly hit up a place in the Indian version of Crystal Mall there because it's something we just couldn't get at home and we were crazy for it. The spices, the smells, the chunks of meat in copious amounts of sauce. There's just nothing like it and when the cravings start, they don't go away until I've had some.

I've been to Palki's during their dinner time and enjoyed it a lot, great atmosphere with great decorations and fairly well kempt. It was a pleasant, quiet evening, very relaxed and the food was awesome; everything was well prepared, well seasoned, good portions (pretty steep price, but on level with every other Indian restaurant on the NS). And I've also done takeout several times, for a quick dinner and some parties. No complaints, ever.

The thing that makes Palki's stand out though, is the lunch buffet. It's awesome. There might not be 10,000 items to choose from (ahem Tandoori Flame in Mississauga) but what there is, is of great quality and regularly gets swapped for new things. You can expect the safe stuff like Butter Chicken and Tandoori Chicken, but they also put down some really cool food that I would normally not try (vegetarian options to be clear). I had the Cabbage and Green Peas the other day, I haven't stopped thinking about it. And they've always (so far as I've been there) served these yam/potato fries for carbs which are amazing to dip into the various sauces (and their naan is no slouch either).

If you work anywhere along the lonsdale corridor (or nv at all), do the lunch buffet with your coworkers. There's something for everyone and it's really well priced but beware, you probably won't be very productive afterwards. This place...

Summary: Great food, great service, good prices, nice environment.

Let me start off by saying that there is great food here. As far as Naan bread goes - which is imperative for my partner and I, much more than rice - this is the best I know. For and from anywhere in BC (I can't compare to the rest of the world, never had Indian food out there), I will repeatedly go on about how great the Naan bread is here.

And Naan bread is not the only thing; all the food I've been around is wonderful, as said by everyone I've been with. I was there with my sister last night and we had a chicken, a lamb and a veggie dish, some rice and some naan, and everything was amazing.

The chicken was beautifully done in a delicious Madras tomato sauce and the veggies were at just the right balance of cooked and crisp to body the taste. The lamb was delicate in its amazing Rogan Josh sauce and the Saag Paneer was one of the creamiest I've had.

I will say that perhaps the paneer could have had a bit of salt in it - but that might just be my taste buds. I like it because it blended beautifully with the spinach, so a lot more salt would have taken away from the dish. But a tiny bit more could have been nice, if it stayed in the cheese.(Maybe I'm on a salt kick right now)

The service was wonderful, helpful and friendly. It was a quiet evening, only a few other tables, but I saw everyone being offered attention and not being hounded.

So yes, 5 stars and a big recommendation to try the lamb...