Café Raj — Restaurant in Albany

The good : Great location, and family owned. Foods from their oven is always consistently good. Such as tandoori chicken , keema naan. family owned and one of the oldest on Solano chai is always ready and if you are come on good timing it’s freshly made. great place to pick up order

The bad : If you are not regular customer or you look Indian or Himalayan you don’t get good and faster service. ( at least to my perspective) -chai and water just dropped it on table and some chai had to be wiped off the table with napkin by myself we almost thought it was self service with no plates and utensils. waited long to order and they were not busy at all. when complained one waitress replied we are busy and I consider people from Nepal like my own. They had only 2 other tables as other guest ( 2 on each table ) -you should treat all customers irrespective of their race and ethnicity same. So treating like my own means giving no plates and utensils, dropping tea and water with complete disregard. Not coming to order while other guest who came later than us was taken food order. why I have to ask for water and plates and utensils when other customers who came later than us was served plates and utensils and spoken with so much respect. maybe that waitress had negative experience with customers from Indian and Nepal. second I am not from Nepal or even from South east Asia. How she just assume I am from that region. No matter the location, and the quality of product ( in this case food). If the customer service is not good. It’s really bad. you don’t have to super nice to people but just don’t be rude. We are paying customers and just came there to eat simple dinner with family. I have been coming there for some many years for pick up and this was the first time to dine in. The customer service was so bad that now I would not even come back for pick up. In terms of food. I love their foods from oven such as keema naan and tandoori chicken but their curries are not consistent.

Summary : best to go for pick up but not for dine in unless you are regular dine in customer Instead of giving people free chai and kheer . Just treat all customers equal. I am sure the owner is real good person and seem to be always in kitchen. But please train your servers to treat people from your own country or neighbor country of yours with same respect as other people. We don’t want to be treated special. Just treat all...

Quite disappointing. Not a good place for Indian food. I recommend avoiding this place. Plenty of other Indian food in the area. I wouldn't come back if they paid me.

The food is lacking in flavor, portion size, and ingredients. Everything tasted like it came from the freezer section at a supermarket or out of a can.

The lamb was nice and tender but that was about the only thing that was good. I ordered medium spicy and both the curries tasted like tomato sauce. No vegetables in the curry whatsoever. Very underwhelming.

The samosas were similarly low on flavor/spice, floppy and not crispy at all, and at least half as small as a normal samosa. Looked and tasted like frozen samosas. Definitely not worth it. The Mint and Tamarind chutneys for dipping the samosas were bland as well.

The naan was thin, tough, and dry. For some reason, it still couldn't absorb any flavor from the curry. It was like a piece of cardboard. Chewy, tasteless, and sad.

I guess the basmati rice was also good but that is nothing to be proud of. Anyone can make rice.

I suppose they gave me a free, tiny tub of rice pudding with my order but that is not even close to making up for the rest of the order. Also, it was pretty lackluster, like the rest of the food. Soggy rice with sugar. No spice, no texture. Just bland, overcooked rice with too much sweetener. Not even coconut milk for flavor.

Overall, I can't recommend this place at all. Bland food, poor textures, and almost no redeeming qualities, certainly none that raise this place above 1 star.

I feel sorry for the chef/owner having their name on a place like this.

Bad food. Sad...

Good Indian restaurant, but slightly above average prices.

Cafe Raj used to be my go-to Indian place when I lived in Albany. They serve consistently decent Indian food, but I found their prices to be slightly higher than your typical Indian places elsewhere (but still fairly reasonable [$7-$12]). You will most likely find Cafe Raj to be fairly crowded any day of the week during dinner, but I don't think the wait time is too bad though, so it's not one of those places you need to get to half an hour before hand to get a seat.

I always used to get their beef samosas. You would get two samosas that were decently large, so it would be an adequate appetizer for two people. The dipping sauces were tasty. I'm a big fan of sweet and savory sauces, so I'd tend to drench mine...=) The Lamb Roghan Josh has always been a favorite as well.

To get the most value from your meal, I would recommend getting the meal to go. Because they provide you with a good amount of curry, you can proportion it to last two meals (thus the slightly higher prices becomes negligible if you split it into two meals..hehe).

I would recommend Cafe Raj for the Albany native looking for good...