Light of India Restaurant — Restaurant in Ottawa

This place is really lovely, it looks, smells, and feels very authentically Indian for sure, and I am saying this as a very high compliment to them. It is conveniently located and had a definite, distinct charm and aura.

When you enter you are greeted exotically with colorful art, quiet background ambience, accommodating seating, and incredible service. They go the extra mile to really serve you well.

We had some appetizers, which in themselves were quite excellent in quality and quantity, the onion bhaji (sp?) were great as was the prawn topped bread.. spicy and perfect. Their naan in fact is actually Incredible, and would make a fine meal of itself, that's my own opinion. If you like naan, these guys rock!

We ordered a couple dishes which were delectable and quite savory. These people know how to really stay true to both sweet and spicy. The dishes were very palatable and we ordered extra basmati rice too. There are enough mild, medium, and hot dishes available.

We even sampled some different beers. Cheetah brand is actually very fantastic and I highly recommend it. Tiger is good too, it was unfortunate they had run out of Kingfisher, but no worries. There were ample wine selections too.

This restaurant has a good menu and something for everyone, if you like Indian. Tasty treats galore!

Their service, as stated prior, is top notch. The complimentary watermelon mini bowl with grapes at the end was a cute touch, and the chocolate mint, after-dinner sticks. Those little efforts mean a lot and go a long way.

We will tell our friends, and be sure to return! If you like authentic Indian, these people will probably satisfy your cravings very well. It was full when we went on Saturday night, and many people came in for take out. It says a lot. Certainly was peak hours.

See you...

To start, this is the first bad review I have ever written for a restaurant. I have written not great reviews before, but there are nearly always redeeming qualities somewhere in the dinning experience. Not here.

My party of 5 arrived at 6:00pm. We places our orders at 6:15pm. We did not receive our meals until 8:00pm. We had no explanation, no one came by to ask how we were doing. Nothing. All the while we watched while people came to pick up there food that they had ordered. We were also informed the fan was broken so we could not have any naan (not the fault of the restaurant mind you).

Not only was the service terrible, this was the worst Indian food I have ever eaten. I got the vegetable curry, and it tasted like frozen vegetables mixed with gravy. It was poorly cooked, and under flavored. 2 others in my party agreed that it was the worst Indian food they had ever had. And to make matters worse, 1 member of the party actually got seriously ill from the food (and we eat Indian food often, so it was not just an upset stomach over Indian food). We paid full price for the meals (which was printed on paper with only the amounts, and not the names of the foods, so who knows what we were even paying for or if it was correct or not).

In conclusion, we waited nearly 2 hours without any word from the restaurant as to why our meals were so late, then got our food and it was terrible, and then someone was sick from it.

We will never be going back, and we will advise others to stay away. However, most people that I have talked to about this experience have been before and have had similar...

The food: way to sweet. The chickpeas were cooked in a bright, unnatural orange sauce and with an obvious taste of sugar; the eggplant was too sweet again (we had nice eggplant indian dishes in UK; eggplant can taste heavenly when cooked properly). Papadums yes, but chutneys no. The curry was ok, nothing special (we ordered a medium-hot (not hot!) curry).

Service: after we arrived, one waiter came, served us water and papadum, and left. And he was left for about 20 minutes. We wanted some chutneys with the papadums; by the time he came back we finished the papadums.

We ordered the food. After about 15 minutes (no complaints here), the other waiter served us. He was friendly alright, but smelly (!) (seriously) and his (long-ish) nails looked dubious. Overall, he looked like he needed a bath and some clean cloths. At some point he knocked over a bottle of beer (ok, happens no worries mate'); some beer spilled and the mouth of the bottle shaved his off-gray (!) coat. The guy didn't have the instinct to offer us another bottle..we didn't say anything either (like nice people what we are).

Too bad, it's a nice place in a great location. But are...