Natraj Tandoori — Restaurant in Lisbon

I eat lots of Indian food. When I am travelling I seek out what hopefully will be another nice meal in another city and paid for by the Company so what's not to like. This restaurant has 4.5 rating with quite a lot of reviews so I was looking forward to a nice meal. Sadly, it was not to be and this has to be one of my worst experiences in an Indian restaurant for many a year.

I ordered Garlic Prawns to start - Gordon Ramsey would have shaken his head as out came some prawns thrown on top of some sort of diced salad with not much thought. No hint of garlic anywhere although the prawns were cooked but not very tasty.

It got worse, I ordered Vindaloo with Pilau Rice and a Plain Naan. Let’s look at each.

1. The rice - some long grain sort of rice mixed with peas ???? Overcooked so not quite ready to be rice pudding but not far off

2. The Naan - thick and doughy just how I don’t like it. Dry as F.... and totally tasteless (and yes I know bread has little taste but normally a bit of butter brings out the flavour but none of that here)

3. Last but not least the Chicken Vindaloo - which I can only describe as Chicken in some sort of red sauce. The was as far away from a Vindaloo as you can get. No potato in sight, no hint of tomato or spice. I presume the Chef (!!) thought a Vindaloo is just for idiots who can't appreciate Indian food so he knocked up a red paste sauce, threw some chicken in and job's a good'un. Revolting is going too far as at least the Chicken itself was alright.

Oh, silly me, I forgot the awful service. One of the guys serving was not exactly what you'd call customer savvy. As if the awful Vindaloo was not bad enough - I asked him for some green chillies - he said he had none (really, an Indian with no fresh chillies ????). He then said one of the sauces in the sauce tray (the one you get for the poppadom’s) was hot, he took the sauce away to fill it up and then came back and poured it all over my meal without asking - turning my meal into an even more revolting vinegary greasy mess.

At this point I'd had enough, I even left my beer so disgusted was I (so being the good soul that I am I paid, gave some feedback to the owner and left).

Maybe just a bad day for them but I for one will not be going back to this place...

This wasn’t our first choice for the evening. Or even in our top five. We chose it because of its proximity to our Airbnb. And we were so glad we did. Firstly there’s the almost hallucinogenic quality of the interior. Then there was the waiter who went out of his way to seat us. Then there was the food. Every dish we received was such a step up in quality from our local Indian restaurant back in the UK. The poppadoms come with a scattering of finely diced red onion and torn coriander alongside the array of accompanying chutneys. The green chilli in particular was great, with bitterness and heat in perfect balance. The two dishes we chose were equally impressive. The flavour profile was just deeper and richer with added complexity. Portion sizes were generous and drinks reasonably priced. We ate and drank like royalty and still spent less than €20 each. I also ended up learning that the Portuguese only gave up Goa in 1961. Food and a history lesson! I wasn’t expecting to come to Lisbon for a curry, but I’m so very pleased that I did. Not a custard...

Really good restaurant, at what's considered a good price for a tourist. The servers are nice and professional, the decoration is amazing and exotic.

We ordered the Entrée mix, which is a mix of fried vegetables and meat with some salad. We also got Cheese Naan and Garlic Naan, as well as a mango lassi and coconut lassi, which were all good. The naans are delicious. We were given an assortment of sauces which are all really good as well.

We then ordered Chicken Tikka Masala and Chicken Shahi. It was super tasty and good, HOWEVER you can choose between Not Spicy, Mildly Spicy and Highly Spicy. I thought my palate was seasoned enough to chose mildly spicy, I was very mistaken. Unless you grew up in Madras I advise you to chose the not spicy version, I was tearing up through my dinner but I kept eating because it was so good.

If you get the not spicy version your experience...