INDIA BHAVAN — Restaurant in Ashwaubenon

Simply put, if you're looking for authentic Indian food, look elsewhere. This food is not considered good-quality Indian food, though it has the potential to be, and it wasn't really good-quality food in general. Honestly quite a let-down considering the good reviews this place received.

Note: Unlike most of the reviewers, I know what good/authentic Indian food is supposed to taste like. My in-laws are from India, and I have been eating their homemade Indian food for a decade now. Not to mention, I have also been to India with my partner (and his extended family who lives there) and we ate plenty of good food there as well. This review takes into account my countless authentic experiences.

For reference, my partner and I ordered paneer tikka masala (medium spice), malai kofta (medium spice), one order of samosas, and two orders of plain naan. We had the food delivered to our house.

Let's start with the samosas. The samosas were under-stuffed and undercooked. Usually, samosas are stuffed to the brim with filling, but these samosas had large gaps inside. The dough is supposed to be slightly firm and crispy all the way through with a dark golden brown color. However, the samosas were very light in color and just barely cooked. They were very soft and barely past doughy on the inside. Also, the flavorings inside could have been much better/stronger. Furthermore, the sauces you are given (tamarind and mint chutneys) were quite disappointing as well. I have never met a tamarind chutney ("imli ki chatni" in Hindi) I didn't like, until now. It was watery and flavorless and lacked the tangy punch normal tamarind has. *Recommendations: Fill samosas all the way; cook samosas in oil for longer time at lower oil temp; don't water-down the tamarind / make it thicker & more tangy.

The paneer tikka masala was very disappointing. You could tell the paneer was not fresh and had been thrown in the dish in a rush. It was very hard, chewy, and flavorless. There were only a few pieces of paneer in a large amount of sauce. The sauce itself had a great tomato flavor, but it was unbearably salty and this only got worse the next day. It was definitely not medium-level spice either (too mild), although I can't really blame them for that because many Americans (& many White people it seems) can't handle their spice. *Recommendations: Add less salt to sauce; boil paneer in an inch of water in a skillet, covered, for ~5 min or until tender, then add into sauce.

The malai kofta was slightly better, but not by much. The sauce was decent and not too salty. Yes, it was a little bland as far as Indian food goes, but it was still acceptable. Unfortunately, the koftas were overwhelmingly salty. They would have had great flavor if they weren't overpowered with salt. Additionally, there were only four small koftas in the entire container which felt like the restaurant was really skimping out. *Recommendations: Add less salt to koftas; add more koftas to the sauce.

Typically, Indian food is more pricy than normal food because of how long it takes to make. This Indian food in particular was more expensive even amongst Indian food, which is a shame because the quality didn't come close to meeting that high price level.

The only positive I have to say about my ordering experience is that the food arrived quickly and my order was correct. Oh, and the naan was fine (but it's almost impossible to screw up naan).

Overall, the food was barely satisfactory at best. If you've got a strong craving for Indian food, I suppose this will suffice to meet that craving. I wouldn't go out of my way to order this food, and I don't see myself coming here again (unless changes are made). I would not recommend this restaurant.

As is, I would rate it 3/5 stars at most. If they were to improve their food by some of the ways I mentioned above, I would definitely give it a second chance and probably a...

05/26/2024

Not here to give a feedback on food but mainly the passive aggressive behavior of the owner. The rest of the staff was LOVELY.

We were driving back from kayaking the weekend of Memorial Day all exhausted. We wanted to eat something comforting so being Indian we chose to eat indian food. Drove an hour back to the restaurant.

The owner welcomed us passive aggressive seeing a big group of people. We requested a table that seats 8 people.

His response:

“You’re not getting that today”

I get it.

The placement was just not cooperative and we sat 4-4 on two different table, happily.

The way he took the conversation ahead felt he wouldn’t care if he lost those 8 customer because he was too set in his ways and had a very successful business.

I also get that it must have been a rush hour. I’ve worked in food fast, I can understand this to the core.

Didn’t care as first BUT.

Later,

He took out order. Looked least bit interested in doing that as if he had the chance, waiting us would be the last thing on his to do list.

We ordered food because we were VERY hungry. We ordered extra spicy food

The food came and the bite I took, I felt like I was eating red chilli powder straight out of the container with some naan. I choked! I couldn’t breath.

Any Indian you ask would tell you that’s not how you make food spicy and if you thought it was the standard, you’ve being going to the wrong restaurant the whole time.

When the owner came back to serve the rest, my friend asked if he could get a papad (as Simple as a toasted bread). His answer was “NO” and he walked away.

“Can we get some papad?”

“NO” walks away

One of the other conversations:

Can we get an idea of a size of roti you serve? “I can’t tell you that” with a straight face.

For me personally, it was a very hostile environment. Trust me when I say that because I am a people pleaser and it takes a lot for me to sit down and leave a review like this.

As a person, in good faith, I could have just walked to the owner and tell him the way he lacked in his professional ways was shocking to me as a business owner and not leave a review knowing it might impact the business but the thing that made me leave this review was knowing he wouldn’t give single f*ck about my in person review.

He was those kind of people who would joke about something knowing it’s going to bother you but have a smirk at the end leaving the situation to be “sarcastic” because If was to confront him, he’d be like, “oh I am so you felt that way, I was only kidding”, knowing damn well what he did back there.

Looking at the other reviews which look so good, I want to gaslight myself into believing that the man was having a bad day but he actually wasn’t.

He was just VERY passive aggressive and hostile.

I am sure he was and will be exactly opposite of how i described him. To each of their own honestly.

I have nothing personal against this man. This was the first time I saw this man, this restaurant is 4 hours away from my house, wouldn’t go back.

To whomever this helps, there are many other great Indian restaurants out there in that area who will be more than happy to have you and treat you like they mean it.

😊 hope you treat your customers better next time even if you are stressed out. If your employees can, you...

I would otherwise highly recommend this place, but I will never go there again. We've been there many times. They actually have a fair amount of gluten free options. I love Indian food and this place is, by far, the best I've had in a really long time. BUT, the caveat here is that they are dishonest and scammers. We were a table of 4 and I paid for the table. I paid the bill with my card and left a cash tip of 20%, which is more than generous in my book for less than average service. I saw a few days later that they had added $20 extra to the charge on my card. There is ZERO chance it was a mistake. The total was $86.44 and they charged my card $106.44. You don't "mistakenly" type extra numbers when cashing out a ticket. They wouldn't allow me to speak to the manager when I called and kept telling me they could/would fix it after investigating. They tried to tell me to come and get cash or they would send it through Zelle, neither of which was an option. Finally, they called back and agreed to send me a check for the $20. In being good people, they could've just refunded to whole ticket, but they didn't and wouldn't, which would've saved us all hassle to just reverse the charge in their POS system. They did nothing to try to make it right. It was a complete hassle and I eventually did get my check in the mail with no apology or anything. I will never go there again because of this. These days, good customer service is the biggest thing we're missing out on, and this was far from it. It was so inappropriate and fraudulent, and they clearly didn't even care. It's not the $20. It's the principal, and therefore will never get my...