India Oven — Restaurant in Cathedral City

So where do I start. First of all I arrived at the restaurant around 6:10 and was seated and was waiting to order my food and get out quick since my mom had to get to work later and I told the waitress that too but we waited 10 minutes, no one came to get our order so i just told my mom to wait and after 10 more minutes I finally asked the waitress how long until she gets our order politely and I stated to her again that my mom had to get to work, then I just waited more AND finally at 6:40, around 30 minutes later the waitress finally came to get our order and I ordered shahi paneer with 3 Garlic naan and jeera rice. After about 20 more minutes of waiting they finally came with our around around 7:00 and boy was I heavily disappointed. The shahi paneer literally had 5 pieces of cheese with each of them being the size of a pinky finger‘s fingernail and the Garlic naan were SOO OVERCOOKED that they literally tasted like ASHH. As soon as I bit into one of them all I could taste was charcoal. Again not willing to eat charcoal and a dish with no cheese, I flagged the waitress down and of course had to wait a long time to even flag her down, I finally stated the troubles with the dish and the naan and her legit response to me about the dish was that they minced the cheese down to super tiny pieces that they dissolve inside the gravy. I was so surprised that she even said that since the dish was called Shahi paneer and if they weren’t gonna add pieces of cheese in the dish then why not just call it shahi gravy? After that she offered to take back the naan and bring new ones out and I was pretty disappointed since I was already on a time crunch and I had to wait even more to eat the food I paid full price for. Not only that when she came back with the naan there wasnt any garlic on them meaning they were just plain naan and when I checked the bill, They had the audacity to charge us for the extra garlic and garlic naan even though we just had plain naan against our wishes. After about 20 minutes after delivering naan I could hear the waitress and the chef argue and fight about the amount of cheese. After some time the waitress finally came out with about 4 pieces of cheese the size of a pinky finger’s fingernail and to my surprise all those pieces were RAW. Literally at first they served me a dish with no cheese AND the dish had cheese in its name because paneer means cheese. Secondly they brought out raw pieces of cheese even though they were supposed to be cooked because that’s how the dish is prepared. I was so astounded that I refused to accept the raw dishes since it seemed like all we wanted was the cheese as if we had never seen cheese before in our life ever. I mean it implied that if you want a quality dish that has what it needs to be a proper dish, you would need to bring your own cheese from home and cook it yourself beforehand. Finally being fed up from the food I decided to just pay for the stuff and leave since it was horrible and in the receipt later that I checked at home, they charged us extra for the garlic naan and on top of that they charged us even more extra for extra garlic on top even though they brought out plain naan to which i was so furious when I checked it back home henceforth the reason I’m writing this review. HONESTLY would not recommend at ALL even to my worst enemies. Horrible service, horrible food and on top of that horrible cleaning as well. It all goes to show that all of these people are just Money Minded and DO NOT care about the...

This place is small, pricey, service is slow, and overall just a dirty restaurant. We eat at a lot of Indian Food restaurants, all over the Country, most of them range from pretty good to excellent, so when we saw the ratings for India Oven, we thought we would give it a try. We arrived just after they opened for the Dinner meal and although we were seated immediately and the server took our order, we didn't even see the appetizer (Samosa Chaat) until we had sat for 25 minutes. The Samosa Chaat was actually the best part of our meal (she had the Vegetable Korma, and I had the Butter Chicken). The Samosa Chaat was large and flavorful, but the entrees were both flavorless - both were missing a key ingredient - Mehti, and the gravy on my butter chicken was completely red - indicative of not enough cream and too much tomato. The flavor for both was flat. To make matters worse, it appeared that the cook, dishwasher, and at least one of the waiters were all sick. They were coughing continually (we could both see them and hear them in the back), and our waiter was actually picking his nose. The waiters were touching their faces and hair continually both before and while serving our meal. The decor of the restaurant isn't that bad, but the carpets, order pickup (you have to walk through it to get to the filthy bathroom) were all filthy dirty, carpets were stained and matted down. There was no music playing in the dining area, no Bollywood TV, just nothing except the incessant coughing and sneezing from the kitchen and order pickup area. Rice does not come with the entree, neither does Naan (which is normal - the rice is not normal). Our bill for two people with two entrees, shared Samosa Chaat, and one Naan was $67. without the tip. I wouldn't recommend this restaurant (well, ok, I would recommend it - to the health inspector, LOL). We should have...

INITIAL 5 STAR REVIEW Finally got to India Oven and ordered the chicken curry, mango chutney, naan and rice pudding.

For a start the server/cashier offered excellent customer service and was able to guide a new customer through the menu as he had excellent menu knowledge and communication skills.

This is my first Indian curry that I've eaten all the sauce as opposed to just picking out the chicken, in 16 years of living in the US.

I always gauge my Indian restaurants by the quality of their mango chutney and naan - India Oven is way superior to others, portion size of mango chutney could be larger! Lol

The only downside was the rice pudding. I felt the ingredients were not fully combined the milk tasted like milk, the cardamom pods were whole and the flavor was not infused.

Definitely an upgrade on Monsoon and in my opinion India Oven offers superior quality, flavor and service - inside the restaurant is very hole in the wall but food is way beyond the decor!

SECOND VISIT

Ordered same again mild and no cilantro. Came covered in cilantro so kindly remade. Sides weren't remade so when got home cold rice and soggy naan.

THIRD VISIT

Ordered mild and no cilantro. This time we joked definitely no cilantro and mild as it is a 40min round trip.

My first mouthful burnt my mouth so spicy. Assuming as chicken curry was their special i got a serving of that as opposed to the a la carte order.

True shame as sincerely my first review reflected perfection.

Reduced rating to 3 stars and sadly feel I've mislead many friends and clients who I've reccomended India Oven as the best.

Staff are lovely but obviously food is not as consistent as...