Namaste Shangri-La — Restaurant in Alaska

This was probably the craziest restaurant experience I’ve ever had. Me and my partner have been here a few times and each time the food is good. Especially for Alaska standards. We came after work to grab a meal. Usually the service is nice and the food takes a little bit to come out so we were prepared for a wait. After we ordered we started conversing as a women randomly sat at our table next to my partner. Shocked and confused we attempted to ignore her since we thought it was an honest mistake. Her back was turned so we thought she didn’t see us sitting there. After a minute or 2 one of the workers finally came by and asked the lady to kindly leave she got up but refused, starting a little seen. Unfortunately I made eye contact with her and she chose to sit next to me and start talking to me. The staff continued to try to reason with her but she refused to leave till she could show me a picture of her daughter. The lady wasn’t hostile but she wasn’t necessarily calm either. So to avoid a scene I agreed to see the photo. As the women stumbled to try to find me a photo somewhere in her phone the staff kinda just left her at our table. I’m sure it was because they didn’t know what to do but this was crazy to me. I assumed they called the cops but they did not. They finally bring out our food like 20 minutes later. The lady is STILL sitting at our table. They ask her to kindly leave and she says she will leave but she wants some of our food. I told her no and that she would need to go now so we could eat. She almost knocked our food off the table from leaning on it so hard. The women finally left and the people apologized. We decided to finish our meal. As we ate the lady came back into the store, sitting at another table alone before screaming and leaving again.

I say all of this because after everything that happened I was very shocked that the business didn’t do more to fix this situation. The servers were kind but obviously couldn’t handle the situation. Then on top of that they charged us full price for our food. We are not cheap people nor can you be when eating out in Alaska, so we don’t mind paying for our food but our evening out was ruined trying to deescalate a drunk women. You couldn’t have at least given us one of our meals for free for the inconvenience?? I felt very unsafe and that the business didnt care so because of this I will...

On our recent trip to Alaska, we ordered some food to go from this restaurant. It was a long day for us as we had to wake up early, 5AM, to catch our flight to Anchorage. Then we spent few hours at the RV reservation. By the time we started our RV journey, it was already 6PM. Everyone in our group wanted to eat Nepali food before we set out on a RV trip of eight days. We picked this restaurant and ordered momo, goat curry, chicken maakhni, and garlic naan. We were all super excited to have Nepali food after such a long and tiring day. As we opened the food containers, first thing we noticed was the absence of aroma coming out of the food which was pretty strange for Nepali food. Some of us, avid momo lovers, started with momos and found that momos were cold......strange again. We microwaved them and dipped in the sauce and oh boy, that sauce smelled weird and tasted even worse. We could tell by the foul smell and bad taste of the sauce that it was just not made fresh but must have been either sitting outside of the fridge for a long time or was too old. Being a goat curry lover, I decided to start with the goat curry and rice. I would have forgiven the restaurant for the dry rice if at least the goat curry was good enough. It was nowhere close to the goat curry I have ever had in my life. They must have just added few goat meat pieces in the premade tomato sauce. The four pieces of goat meat, which costed us $19, had barely any meat in them. Then I tried the garlic naan and chicken maakhni. They were equally disappointing. Garlic naan was dry as a desert. Chicken pieces in chicken maakhni was equally dry too.

How could you be so bad at everything? We could have understood if the food had not quite met our expectations, but being that bad at every dish was beyond our imagination. We were lucky to survive the negative outcome of it. If we had fallen sick, it would have ruined our entire trip. I wish I could give the restaurant negative 5 stars. I am sorry I am saying this, but this restaurant is truly a shame to the Nepali community.

I hope the local food safety inspectors see my review and does a thorough inspection of this place. I also ask the restaurant owner...

TL;DR: Visited twice during a trip to Anchorage—delicious, light, Nepali-influenced Indian food. Friendly staff, clean space, and consistently good dishes. Definitely worth stopping by.

Details:

We visited Namaste Shangri-La during a recent trip to Anchorage, and ended up going twice because we enjoyed it so much. This Indian restaurant has a distinct Nepali-style influence in its cooking, which gives the food a comforting, home-cooked quality that we really appreciated.

On our visits, we tried the samosa chaat (excellent flavors and textures), the dal tarka (warm, simple, and delicious), and the paneer lababdar, which was well-balanced—not too rich or creamy. In fact, the food here overall is lighter and less greasy, making it easy on the stomach while still being full of flavor.

The raita was a little watery, which might be the style, but we’d have liked it slightly thicker. The tandoori roti and garlic naan were both fresh and well-prepared—great accompaniments to the meal.

The staff were extremely friendly and welcoming, and the restrooms were clean and well kept—always a good sign of attention to detail.

There’s no one dish we’d call a must-try because everything we ordered was consistently good. If you're in Anchorage and craving Indian/Nepali flavors, this is a great spot...