Royal Indian Restaurant — Restaurant in Kolkata

Food and service is good. Don't order any Biriyani and the journey would be a joyride!

My review is based on a dine in lunch experience. It is a as objective and descriptive as possible. Begin.

Our order included: Special Mutton Biryani Sprite (as they couldn't serve fresh lime soda) Royal Special Mutton Chaap Firni

The Biriyani was average. The rice was dry for most of it and suddenly oily at the bottom. At points, it felt microwaved due to the uneven heat distribution. "The authentic flavours of Biryani", as the restaurant menu card itself states, was missing from the rice. The mutton pieces were good and well cooked but stiff. Quantity wise it was sufficient.

The Mutton Chaap was absolutely amazing. Filled with spices, flavourful, tendor, and delicious. It is a must try. Quantity might seem less at the first glance but it was sufficient for three people alongside Biriyani.

Firni was okay. Not very sweet but vividly carrying the essence of kesar and pesta. It serves the purpose of a dessert very well.

The service was impressive as they were very efficient even under high pressure of durga puja. Not only were the orders taken and served on time, the waiter stopped to make proper suggestions which defines the customer service.

My advice, completely based on my experience would be, to order indian breads, and other delicacies and not the Biriyani (not even the Lucknow one as I confirmed the same rice is used for both Kolkata and Lucknow Biriyani). The Chaap was amazing which restored my faith in the brand after the Biriyani. I have deducted two stars mainly due to the highly disappointing Biriyani and the missing Fresh Lime Soda (which I feel is a must for every restuarant to have). Other than that, Royal lives...

Where do I even start! While most of the old restaurants have rather old staff, who would have served my grand father and they have terrible attitude towards new customers. People generally frequent this place because of the name it's older branch earned, with best food and decent service. However you would be in for a shock at this branch. They simply don't care. Courtesy isn't a word found in their dictionary. However the food is even worse. There are several newer joints around this place who serve much better food. And they even robbed me one day. They accepted an order for rezala and khulcha yet then after waiting for more than half an hour informed me that kulcha was not available, I would be refunded. I asked them to give me something in return and they gave me 3 naan roti or tandoori roti can't remember but they didn't refund me anything. Told me they are giving more number of naan then what they actually gave me. They people sitting on the counter seem like they are royalty themselves so it's very difficult to muster the courage to challenge them. Not sure if anyone else feels this way. Some restaurants and stores make you feel like they are doing you a favor by serving you. As if you aren't good enough to be served there. Shiraz, This Royal and a few other restaurants have this same attitude. I wish they changed. Because the other royal is very far from my house and it's a nightmare to find parking or climb the steep stairs to get a table and the downstairs is always full. Wish they take this positively and change, I live less than a kilometre from here and would really want to eat here regularly. That is one of the reasons I try them after every few years, hoping they...

Royal has recently opened a branch in South Kolkata at Park Circus, giving us foodies a much required relief from traveling through bylanes of Chitpur. If you compare the two outlets, the Park Circus outlet will win in terms of decor & ambience, but it will be a one sided win for the Chitpur outlet in terms of taste & quality.

I have visited the Park Circus outlet one and ordered from them quite a few times.

The new place, specially their AC section looks quite lavish. Seating chairs & sofas are quite comfortable. You can also get a table beside the glass window & get an outside view while having your food. These tables are quite popular & high in demand.

Now coming to the food, we ordered chicken pahari kebab as starter, our all time favourite royal mutton biriyani & mutton chaap and fresh lime soda to gulp down all.

We have heard quite position reviews of pahari kebab so we decided to try it, but turned out quite bland & a little raw. Didn't like it.

Mutton biriyani was good as usual with mutton keema motis. Alas, we didn't know that they are now serving alu with biriyani on request, so couldn't taste it. The mutton meat was soft & rice was flavourful. But the mutton keema motis were completely bland. This outlet's biriyani can't replace the Chitpur outlet's biriyani.

Mutton chaap was spicy & tasty, but bones were on the higher side.Fresh lime sodas were good.

The stuff were extremely polite & courteous.

On other occasions when I ordered biriyani & chicken pasanda, both didn't turn out well.

Go there if you want to have a overall good experience, but if you want to taste the real Royal biriyani, go to the...