Raja Indian Restaurant Cambridge — Restaurant in Cambridge

The Cambridge Curry Crew and I decided to try the Raja on King Street. From the outside the place looks quite nice though is easy to miss when walking past. Once inside you are welcomed by friendly staff and reasonable decoration. It is missing a lot of that traditional indian style which adds to much atmosphere to a standard indian yet fails to fit in to the category of those modern looking indians you see so often now days. It almost feels like a white room with indian stuff stuck on it. The place is smaller than I though by looking at it from the out side. The menu was well presented and done in a way which makes it incredibly easy to understand. They put food in to different categories which is great, especially for people who arent sure what they wanted. I would have liked to have seen clearer labelling on the Vegetarian dishes though. The food took a while to come out, nothing terrible but just longer than most places. The place was quite busy for its size, though it was a Saturday night so youd think they would have prepared for this. The papadums were slightly disappointing. I had to ask for lime pickel as extra and none of the other four sauces really managed to wow me. They were quite liquid and lacked good flavour and texture. The main course however was sensational. Though I would say the portions were quite small in comparison to other places, the Saag Aloo was some of the best I have tasted. So many places fail to get this right to me tastes, but they nailed it. The Vindaloo I had was incredibly delicious and went down a treat, though I know a lot of restaurants want to cool down a lot of these hot curries for the masses, I found my Vindaloo incredibly mild. If you are after a hot curry here I would suggest asking for their curry hot when ordering. Even though my vindaloo was under the "hot category" on their well presented and well labelled menu, it was anything but! The beer on tap was Kingfisher, which is one of my favourites but anything other than that is in bottles. I am very sad to say that the beer was £4 a pint which is pretty expensive, even by Cambridge standards.

Location wise this place does have a purpose. There arent many indians in the area beyond a 15minute walk in Cambridge, which is handy if you are down King Street a lot. There is no free parking in the area and not any decent paid parking either, which sadly is something I have to mark them down for. Expect to add an extra few pounds on to the cost of the meal unless you live in Cambridge for parking/public transport.

Over all this place didnt blow me away. The food was average verging on good, the service was very friendly though quite slow and the food was good value but sadly let itself down with expensive beer. The decoration and lay out was something to be desired and didnt seem to fit in to any style of traditional or modern indian.

This place is pretty average the whole way through, though by no means a bad place. I think the main problem with it is there are so many other better places in Cambridge I would recommend over it. That being said, if you are in the area, live close by or just fancy a quick curry while drinking down King Street then this place...

One of the worst experiences ever. The samosa was burnt at first. Then the food portions we ordered were not served all at once until we called the manager and said this is only for 4 people when we were 8 and we ordered 2 portions each one “serving 4 people”. Then later on the food we ordered was very simple and not tasty, and we got charged at first £63 for 2 dishes of lamb Biryani which actually came missing the side served with it (dhall) and on the menu it is for £13 something. How is it possible to get charged that much for 2 dishes that should be maximum £30-32. Similarly with the chicken Biryani that was not on the menu and we were never told that it wasn’t there when of our guests asked for it and it will be charged this amount, he decided to charge us £59 for it. Then the restaurant added other things we didn’t order in our bill. They changed the bill 3 times for us and went down from £272 to £180 due to so many mistakes. However, the manager raised his voice and shouted at me, and decided to talk my male friend instead of me saying he doesn’t want to argue with me as i was a female. I was like i am the one paying and this is absolutely unacceptable. He tried apologizing afterwards saying oh i want you to be a customer, forgive me. Anyway check your bill guys before paying, even though i do not recommend the place at all. Very unpleasant experience in front...

My wife and I have been living in Cambridge for 3 years and have tried at least 10 of the Indian restaurants in town, with Taj Tandoori, Royal Spice, and Namaste Village being our typical favorites. We had walked by Raja at least 50 times before and decided it was finally time to try it, especially given how nice it looks inside. Honestly, we were pretty underwhelmed by the food and service there. We had a vegetarian platter and veg jalfrezi -- both of which were OK, but neither were particularly flavorful or notable. If it is possible to make a curry both spicy and not full of flavor, that was our experience. Additionally, the service was quite poor. Our food took at least 50 minutes to get, as did the food at the tables surrounding us, and multiple people in other groups were complaining to the staff about the very long wait. Several people's orders also got messed up. To me, it seemed like the place was short staffed, with only 2 waiters but about 20+ tables. Overall, our dining experience was about 3.5-4 stars, and although the food was totally fine, we wouldn't come back to Raja again or recommend it to anyone relative to all the other great Indian spots...