Punjabi Tadka Bali — Restaurant in Kuta

If you're in Bali and craving real, flavorful Indian food, let me save you some time: Punjabi Tarka is hands down the best Indian restaurant I tried during my trip. I sampled a few places before finding this gem, but nothing came close in terms of taste, service, and authenticity.

🌟 A Warm Welcome & Authentic Flavors The moment we walked in, we felt at home. What made the experience even more special was Chef Lalit — not only is he an expert in the kitchen, but he personally came to our table to make sure we got the right level of spice and flavor. His dedication truly made a difference.

🍽️ What We Ate We started our day with a classic Indian breakfast:

Chole Bhature Aloo Paratha Both dishes were absolutely spot-on. The flavors reminded me of street food back home — rich, comforting, and full of taste.

Later for dinner, we went for:

Kari Chicken Butter Garlic Naans The curry was perfectly cooked, with just the right amount of spice, and the naan was soft, buttery, and full of flavor. Every bite took us straight back to Punjab!

💁‍♀️ Service That Deserves 5 Stars The staff at Punjabi Tarka deserve a special shout-out — especially the girls working there. Everyone was incredibly polite, professional, and attentive. From helping us choose our meals to checking in during dinner, their service was genuinely outstanding.

✅ Final Verdict: A Must-Visit! If you're searching for authentic, delicious Indian food in Bali at a reasonable price, Punjabi Tarka should be your top pick. Chef Lalit and his team made us feel welcomed, satisfied, and completely at home. I give it a...

Not recommended. Terrible service, food not good, and menu is misleading. If you order the chicken tikka masala, it is a dish that is eaten with rice, but you find out later that it doesn't include rice. You pay extra for that. It's like a sandwich shop posting sandwich prices, but then you find out it doesn't actually include the bread. All three servers that came to our table had very limited English and obviously didn't care about customer service. We ordered two different kinds of naan but only received one, and when we tried asking which one we were brought, the waiter was struggling to understand so he just completely walked away acting like he understood when I was in the middle of the question and never returned. So strange to have somebody just walk away as if you're not even talking to them... especially when we were being friendly and not complaining about anything like we could have been! Also, one server told us we could pay with credit card while another one lied and said the card machine was broken. We found out 5 minutes later that he just didn't know how to use it, and then we had to wait another 5 minutes to make sure they got their 3% card transaction fee, because he didn't add that on to the initial transaction. The prices are already 20 to 30% higher than typical Bali touristic restaurants, so why the 3% surcharge was so important is beyond me. The whole dining experience was pretty awful, but mainly the attitude of the staff that just didn't care was enough to merit...

I rate this place a 2/5 at best due to the quality of food, service and price to portion ratio at this restaurant.

From a portion size perspective and a reference to gauge, see the image of one of the main courses costing 99,000 rupiah alongside the salt shaker. This compared to its competitors around the corner is almost 1/3x more costly. The curries we ordered were quite sub-par, I personally wouldn't go there again. It's likely targeting tourists that need a fix of Asian food while on their holiday but doesn't deliver quality.

Furthermore the waiting staff forgot items off the order even after they noted it down, and repeated the order. These forgotten items only arrived once reminded and after almost 15mins. By this time your appetite is gone.

My other recommendation is to split the bread basket and not have all the different breads/naans ordered all stacked up on one pile. This way we could not identify what was what, this becomes a massive issue when we have people with specific dietary needs.

The owner also had a "we are always right" mentality which was not pleasant and unprofessional. Not a way to run a business.

The ambience was great, it was nicely decorated but the...