Lakshmi: Indian Restaurant — Restaurant in Níjar

We've been enjoying Indian food in the UK for 35 years (including Michelin starred restaurants in London). We've visited Lakshmi several times now and it's generally pretty good. Much better than the last Indian restaurant on the same site which was going downhill on our last visit. We've also been to their other restaurant in Retamar several times. The poppadoms are good, always crisp and fresh. The dips are ok but quite small. We tried a few starters and generally avoid the meat/tikka dishes now as they were quite dry and overcooked. A great butter chicken is a thing of beauty but the one here is a little bit sweet which a butter chicken should never be. However the other standard curries are pretty good, the Rogan Josh and Jalfrezi for example. The daal is also decent. The nan bread is very good, thin and crispy. The service is often slow and chaotic at times. We had to ask for water quite a few times. They try and push bottles of Cobra (an eye watering €7 for a large bottle) it came out unchilled, but they do have beer on tap. If you sit outside there are pleasant views outside to the hills. As with most restaurants here, it's not cheap. Overall a good Indian restaurant in San José with some decent standard home made curries but it could do with some...

A very bad experience.. the food was terrible. The Onion Bhajis were not fresh, and completely tasteless with very poor texture. We only tried two and left the rest as they were so bad. They were served on a base of sliced white cabbage which was brown around the edges... if you had this in your refrigerator you would throw it out. The rice was also horrible. I had had better from a plastic microwave packet in a supermarket. The vegetable curry was made from frozen vegetables (look for small, square diced carrot, peas and beans - a dead giveaway). It had a very poor flavour and the whole dish was unappetising. We asked for a vegetarian main curry and were told none was available and they could not make one! The only vegetarian choices were from the side dishes, which strongly suggests they are relying on pre-cooked dishes rather than making everything from fresh ingredients. The poppadoms were stale. The four small sauces provided were some of the worst we have ever been offered and tasted as bad as those you can buy in plastic bottles in a supermarket. Sweet, sticky, strange colours and zero authentic flavour....

Sorry to say the quality of the food here has gone down drastically since the change in ownership. Out of all the dishes we tried, the poppadoms were the only standout. Unfortunately, the rest of the meal was a letdown. The prawn jalfrezi was more like a sweet sauce-covered disaster, with a bright red color that didn't remotely scream authentic. The lamb madras had an unwelcome surprise - mushrooms. I love a good mushroom but not in a madras. The mixed grill was a travesty, with most of the meats deep-fried to an unpleasant texture. The okra was over-fried, and while the saag paneer was passable and the daal was good, it wasn't enough to save the meal. Hopefully, the new owners will take some feedback on board and get back to serving the kind of food that originally made this place an excellent addition to the San Jose...