Rajdarbar Indian Restaurant — Restaurant in Chiang Mai Province

I read the reviews for RajDarbar online and was so excited to try it out. While the staff were friendly and told us what’s spicy on the menu and what isn’t, the food was sadly disappointing.

Having lived in India for most of my life I can tell you the food was sadly lacking. While the food looked and smelled great it didn’t do the same to my or my Indian friends tastebuds. Every dish felt like something was missing/didn’t have that punch in it like it generally does and we ordered a ton because we were so excited. The malai tikka tasted sweet and I mean unnaturally sweet. Felt like they put a ton of sugar in it, which shouldn’t be the case. The ingredients need to be blended in such a way where we don’t specifically taste an ingredient - also it lacked malai! The entire non veg platter was disappointing. Leading to our main course and the chicken mughlai lacked the flavor it should have had, cannot put my finger on it but something was missing. The mango lassi lacked consistency and even though all of this we decided to give the masala chai a shot cuz how can a place like rajdarbar not make a good masala chai? The masala was missing from the chai, all we tasted was a weak watery milky tea- sounds contradicting but they managed to actually do that.

So here’s the thing, I read about two Indian restaurants in Chiang Mai which got GREAT reviews and I was so excited to try them both. My verdict, I’d much rather go to Aacha for my Indian food. It is pricier than rajdarbar but you pay for quality. The food there does taste like it was made by someone who cares.

I’ve got just one picture I clicked, was the start of my meal and so I was excited but after tasting the food I lost all interest in wanting to click any pictures because it wasn’t worth it.

One word for...

The food here is really good, and the reason I have rated them 2-stars is because of their carryout packaging. Their methods to package foods to be consumed at home are both unsafe and impossible to open the packages. Thus, I can not recommend this restaurant for pick-up/takeout nor for delivery.

They use staples to close the bag for fried foods, which is not only difficult to open the bags but also extremely dangerous as the staples can end up in the food. Also the lids on the small round to-go containers are impossible to get open and I had to chop one container open with a meat cleaver (and on a following evening carve the top open with a Chef knife) to be able to eat the food inside.

Aside from the boring and unremarkable yellow rice, mixed with white rice and raw river prawns which they served me, the food is good. My main issue is how they cannot see the staples on food containers as being an extreme liability (they should be using tape). The fact that they don't know that metal staples should not even be in the proximity with food makes we wonder how many other food safety practices are they completely unaware of.

See photos below or the translucent/undercooked shrimp/prawns that they put in a container...

I had high hopes from all the rave reviews but this was a disappointing meal and a continuous exercise in frustration. I ordered the vegetarian combo (2 curries, dahl, rice, naan) with garlic instead of plain naan. Everything was largely flavorless. No heat, no spice, no flavor, no depth. I could barely distinguish the dishes without looking at them. Maybe it was unfathomable that a falang would want spicy food but when I asked for chili he didn't seem to understand, then he brought me the Indian dipping sauces; so I asked again and was brought a dish of whole chilies, onion and lime slices (k...?). I sat there struggling to cut chilies with my fork and spoon (what the heck am I supposed to do with whole chilies?) while the guy just stood there (probably thinking I was bat-poo crazy... at least he was friendly though). After mixing in some badly chopped chilies and heaps of salt the foot was somewhat palatable.

Now that its over it's a bit funny, but I guess I'll just go to India for good Indian...