Namaste — Restaurant in Municipality of Chania

Read the reviews online and visited for dinner. The restaurant’s located upstairs caddy-corner from a small square off the main seafront walkway. Plenty of space available, we were greeted and seated promptly. Friendly owner and waitstaff. For starters, ordered local Cretan Charma Lager Beer and Avocado and Salty Lassis, together with Veggie Pakoras. These arrived promptly; the Pakoras were crisp and tasty, with tart-sweet Tamarind Chutney. The Lassis and Beer too hit the spot on a very hot day. For mains, went fully vegetarian with Punjabi Bhindi (Okra), Mango-Pineapple-Paneer Curry, Mixed Dal, Garlic Nan and Jeera Rice. The latter as well as the Pineapple-Paneer-Curry were the stars of the show! Upon having been warned through reviews of the spice levels escalating insanely beyond a 2 on 10 mainly due to addition of raw chili powder, we ordered level 2. In retrospect, we should have stayed at the lowest level 1 for the other dishes. Despite being spicy food and Punjabi cuisine aficionados (having eaten such food in India and all our lives), we could not finish the food due to the burning/overwhelming raw chili powder taste (not sure who would want to venture beyond a 2; not sure either the purpose of a scale that goes to 10, when 2 itself is intolerable - oh well). A pity really, as each of the dishes in native Punjabi home-cooked style would have been spectacular - we know as we cook it often - our favorite cuisine among Indian ones. Adding raw chili powder to increase spice levels and not cooking it down and balancing with other flavors is a cardinal sin of Indian cooking. The on-the-house Chocolate-covered Vanilla Ice Cream sticks were a welcome relief at the end of the meal. The meal set us back a modest EU 62, not bad for a tourist town. Give the place a try if you crave Indian food, but as the menu warns, you spice up at...

This gentleman claims to have won awards on Tripadvisor (where the rating is 4 stars). And he writes detailed essays when someone gives them bad review, instead of taking it as a lesson.

He has the audacity of blaming the customers in each of his bad reviews.

Unfortunately, we went there as well and were thoroughly disappointed. There is nothing Indian with this restaurant except the Namaste name. I have never seen anyone so rude and racist. I am saying this because as soon as he sees that you are an Indian, he will know that any Indian will not like there food and thus he behaves very rudely from the start.

This restaurant has 8 different levels of spiciness and when we asked him to suggest what would be an Indian spicy level, he said its 1. Who eats the 7th level when he suggest 1 to an Indian customer.

We ordered murg punjabi and Dal tadka. We didn’t have a problem with spiciness but there was just no taste at all and no salt. The gravy was all watery and all over the plate. Thats not how murg punjabi looks or taste like. He also claims that people complain about his food because they want free food but the thing is no one is so cheap to have his food for free. Its not even worth free of cost. He has the audacity to tell that he was watching us from security camera. I mean who does that??

I come from India and I have eaten indian food all over Europe and this has got to be the worst Indian food of all time. He was utterly rude and impolite and I have never seen anyone like this.

The first thing this man should keep in mind if he claims to run an Indian restaurant, that hospitality is Indian first thing. Don’t fake it when you are not one.

AVOID THIS RESTAURANT...

Having had my own restaurant business I doubted if I should write this review, as it is something that will stay online for a long time and i know what kind of impact it can have.

However, tonight I felt extremely disappointed in the food and even more in the service, for me reason enough to post this review.

I ordered the Samosa’s and the Butter chicken level 1 spicy (out of 6 which is the most spicy) The samosa lacked flavor, they were a bit bland. The so called butter chicken was very salty, didnt have the authentic butter chicken flavor and it was extremely spicy. (I am used to eating spicy food, being Indian myself, but it was too much for me)

I asked the man whom i think is the owner if could have a spoon of yoghurt to cool it down. First he came up with a story of some one who could eat on the scale of level 10 spicyness. (I dont know his point of telling me this) later he brought me a bowl of Raita (indian yoghurt) which they also had put this on the bill.

When i made a comment about this, that i only wanted a spoon of yoghurt, he started blaming me, and saying that it was my own fault for ordering the level one. He then childishly threw the last dishes on the table in a basket making a lot of noise, whilst sighing really deep. He was throwing a little tantrum at our table.

I have NEVER experienced anything like this. Besides the disappointing quality of food, this man should really take some training in customer service. He was just rude.

What a waste of money and good spirits. NEVER again!

Photo 2: prawn Tandoori of my friend. The only “tandoori” thing about it, was it’s color. Unfortunately again, the authentic and delicious tandoori flavour was far...