Indian Village ( Vegetarian Kitchen ) — Restaurant in Bakersfield

Today I had lunch after an AMAZING experience in April 2024. I had written a detailed review below, and I am editing this post with today's super disappointing experience.

We had paneer tikka masala, which hardly had any paneer, Malai Kofta, which had 4-5 small pieces of kofta, dal was super ordinary, and rotis were just 3/5.

Overall, a bad experience, and when I checked the owner, who was also cooking food for us, she confirmed that the chef who cooked delicious food in our last visit was not there, and she cooked the food.

My view is that if you do not have an experienced cook, you can expect such ordinary quality food. The presentation of the food was bad, and the service was also equally bad, as there were only two staff including the cook, who was serving around 15 people, which is impossible. I am not sure if I would try here again. I feel sorry that this is a family-run restaurant and bad reviews impact the business, but if you cannot cook good food and provide better service, it is impossible to get good reviews.

My earlier post in April 2024

I had dinner in Indian Village restaurant in April 2024 and I must say that this is the BEST Vegetarian ONLY Punjabi special restaurant that I enjoyed in the last several years in US. Much of the credit goes to the Chef who cooked an amazing dishes.

I had Palak paneer and nan and this came with a salad. Palak paneer was tasty, hot, right level of spices and good quantity for 2 people. I hope they will maintain the quality and quantity. Nan was also equally good

Service is good and this restaurant is managed by two people

Cook came and spoke about how he has tried to use good ingredients to make a tasty dish.

I will probably try again today with my daughter who is equally fond of good Vegetarian Punjabi restaurants

Location is convenient and just 5 mins off 99HWY. Anyone driving to LA or Vegas can stop and enjoy a nice meal

Price is reasonable.

It will be nice if they have one Thali option with 2-3 vegetables ( smaller quantity) so that you can taste all the vegetables

Ambience is food and they serve their dishes in plates unlike Bay Area where every restaurant uses paper plate.

Surprised that there are not many reviews on Yelp and I heard that this restaurant started in January 2024. I will give 5 star for sure. There was one more couple who had their dinner and they were also very happy with the food

Anyone who wants to enjoy Vegetarian Punjabi restaurant should visit this place and encourage such establishments run profitable for longer period. We all know that there are many Vegetarian and Non Vegetarian restaurants but very few Vegetarian...

At no fault of the owners, this restaurant is located in a strip mall that is experiencing some urban blight - and it gave me small pause when I pulled up to the restaurant, not knowing if I wanted to go in or not - however, the nice Grade "A" sign from the health department displayed prominently in the window, pushed me to go inside. I am so very glad I did! When you walk inside you will notice the restaurant is very basic, no frills, but it was clean. The woman who was there (Sandeep) asked if I would be dining in, or taking the food to go - I chose the latter. I grabbed a menu and started looking through it; I am not extremely familiar with Indian food, so I asked for some recommendations - Sandeep was so very kind and took a lot of time with me explaining the various dishes. I decided on the "Veggie Korma" along with some rice and garlic naan. I took not quite 15 minutes to get my food, a reasonable amount of time I felt as I could hear them cooking everything up in the back.

I am so upset I forgot to take a picture!!!! THAT'S how good the food was!! The presentation, even in the to-go containers, was lovely. The korma was hot and had a beautiful level of spice (I chose mild), the garlic naan was to die for, and the jasmine rice was good.

I am really happy to have found this little spot as I plan to stop by more often on my lunch hour to have some healthy, vegetarian, Indian food.

And the friendly owner(s) at Indian Village are absolutely the cherry on top...

To be honest, I generally don't eat my vegetables. I'm meat-and-potatoes through and through. My wife though, started chemo and immunotherapy a little while ago, and for some reason, she now has an aversion to meat. My wife and I don't have a lot of experience with Indian cuisine. Full disclosure.Because this place is STRICTLY vegetarian, it may have affected my review.but The complete lack of visual appeal asks much of the customers that visit. We had to walk through about 5 desperate looking homeless people just to get to the front door. When we got there, there were fingerprints covering the windows. The glass looked like it had never been washed. The dining area seems to purposely be kept warm in the summer, in order to save money. The decor was just white paint. No pictures, no paintings, just white. One door was decorated in wrapping paper. The bathroom was relatively clean. My wife did not like her main dish but that had, I think, more to do with her trying something new rather than the cooking itself. I enjoyed my potato and pea dish. While mine had an excellent flavor, I wish it had more potatoes and peas. The staff are a terribly nice, hard working family trying to get ahead and I am pulling for them. This is a place that I very much wanted to like but there were too many distractions that took the focus away...