Ambar India Restaurant — Restaurant in Champaign

I have no idea how this place is still open. It tries to make itself look like an upscale restaurant while serving common indian dishes and having students as their main customer??

I guess I’ll start with the good. Cleanliness of the place has definitely improved and they’re open on sunday’s.

Menu with no pictures, so if you aren’t indian or familiar with indian cruisine you’re just kinda stuck googling for images of the dish. Nothing like a description of the dish anywhere

Staff basically gives you water then leaves you alone.

Now the food

The dish on the right, tasted disgusting. Half the dish was just onions and I had one slice of bell pepper in the corner. The bell pepper tasted raw and instead of a fork I got TONGS.

Middle dish was alright but its literally like maybe 8 pieces of chicken. You get to pick the spice level from 1-6.

Rice tasted pretty good but cmon, its rice.

Very stingy with the rice and portion sizes are way too small. The sauce of the dessert tasted alright but the dessert itself tasted soggy and cold in the middle.

I suspect a majority of the dishes were frozen, definitely not fresh. Perhaps thats why they churn out dishes so fast.

Worse of all, this all came out to 42.34 USD, and that was WITHOUT TIPS. The portion sizes, the eh service and basic food does not justify anything close to the price it came at. just don’t bother with ordering from the menu, there are better places to go if you want good indian food

The only thing that might be worth it is their buffet, but even then it’s just because of the variety and the price point.

Indian food takes a long time to properly make, and they’re speeding through it.

There’s a reason why Cravings and Ten second rice noodles is always packed and this...

Located close to the UIUC university campus, Ambar (not to be confused with Amber), meaning the sky is a students friendly restaurant offering small plates, small prices, and delicious Indian fare.

The good stuff: We stopped by for snack time after dropping off our freshman and had some paneer pakora, chicken pakora, and special aloo tikki. The dishes come with a tiny cup of chutneys of two different varieties. The paneer is chunky and big. The special aloo tikki is special because of the channa. The channa overwhelms the taste of aloo tikki.

The not so good stuff: The server was a bit grumpy and hardly smiled throughout the time. There were no plates placed on the table when we were served. I guess this was because the servings were small enough for one, and possibly the server thought we were not sharing the 3 items. The tiny cups are not dippable, not shareable. The chicken pakora was probably hurriedly made as the batter was still wet between folds.

Overall Ambar is a good place for quick plate of delicious...

I felt exhausted eating the mushroom saag. It wasn’t fresh and had a strong tangy flavor. Dal Makhani was good with rice. It is a typical Punjabi sized meal and the amount of rice is very very less. The thali had two pieces of gulab jamun which were dried up as well. I know people do not prefer to take the sugar syrup here in the US but at least the Jamuns have to be dipped and taken out before serving. Otherwise they tasted good. I also ordered poori, which literally had oil on it

The bill was $17. Not a proper match for the price and quantity provided. No receipt was offered. I kinda felt turned off with the hospitality. The turban paaji was patient and welcoming but the other one wasn’t. Probably that’s his general nature.

One should definitely try this place but not sure if you’d wanna comeback for...