Taste of India — Restaurant in Charleston

Oct 28, 2021 - sad to say but this place is off my favorite places to dine. This is a lengthy review but, my honest opinion of today's experience. After trying to give leniency for the poor and lengthy service experience to the issue of the pandemic, I've decided it's now past that grace period. My last two visits here were not the best but, I decided to try once more. We arrived around 1p, there were 3 tables of diners who appeared to be in the finished stage of their meals. We (myself, my sister and a 16 month old toddler) were the only others in the restaurant. After being seated, it took almost 10 minutes for someone to take our order. The lunch menu prices were equal to the dinner prices with no extras like flat bread and sauces offered. After 10 minutes the toddler started to become fussy, I asked for crackers and was told I'd have to order "cracker bread"? Ok, so I did - it came relatively soon so we were able to pacify the little one until more real food arrived - still no sauces just dry crispy flat cracker like bread. Almost 20 minutes later the food arrived - we were ordered by the woman who took our order to move our napkin and utensils so the server guy could place the food on the table? She then motioned for the guy with the food to place food dishes in specific spots on the table? We had ordered onion bread and plain bread but was served only onion bread, I can not eat onions due to health issues. I decided not to ask for correction because I did not want to wait any longer. The food - a simple lamb curry & a simple shrimp curry was good - NOT great, there was only enough rice for one and when asked for more the lady acted like it was an oppression and grudgingly brought more but first took the original rice plate from the table to refill rather than bring clean plate. When we were finished eating, the woman began to clear the dishes and asked if we needed anything more, we said no - I had my credit card out waiting for the bill, the lady sees the card and says give me the card and walked away without first presenting what we owed? Then a guy returned with the bill in a metal carrier and I found that besides the meal fees, the "cracker" bread was charge for @ $1.98 and the onion bread was charged for @ $4.95 in addition. That made lunch $42.09 - at this point I was hesitant to leave a TIP (which is supposed to represent 'Tops In Service' not an expected surcharge to a meal) but, I decided to leave the gratuity which now put lunch at $48.09. This was NOT a fine dining situation. All in all this experience has tainted my future patronage of this establishment. It's a shame as this really was my go to place for authentic Indian food in the West Ashley/Charleston area. Guess take out is the focus of this places business now because it's apparent that dine-in is no longer the focus. So in lieu of not leaving a TIP for service not well rendered, I will just not be a...

I went here with a few of my Indian friends as I keep exploring the Indian food across the nation. I had been an avid lover of Indian recipes and I have also been to India a few times so I can provide my views based on my experience at other places. First things first - Adherence to the safety during Covid-19: I was surprised to see that this restaurant is so small and yet full. You can pretty much see people on each table and there is no adherence to the safety protocols. The servers are not covering their entire face (mouth/nose) and probably not using cleaner masks. I am not sure if their kitchen staff is following these strict protocols as well but you can only see the front staff. So, if the restaurant owners are reading this review, please please follow the protocols for the safety of yourself and your guests who are trusting you in these difficult times.

Secondly - Service: The service is excruciatingly slow and there is no such thing as customer service. They just seem to be running around in and out and appear fully disorganized. We had to wait for at least 15 minutes before the server could even come and take our drink order. So, don't expect a great service and be prepared to stay hungry for 30-45 minutes before you see your food.

Thirdly - Food Quality: So, as I said, I had been around other places and have some understanding of the Indian food, my rating for their food quality is just "average". Most Indian restaurants prepare their curry bases in advance and keep using that for their orders but here I could feel that they use their curries for more than a week or so and heat up the preparation when they get the orders by mixing some ingredients. I just expected fresher taste than what we got. And I could not understand why they took so long to bring our food as nothing is freshly made here. If you want to test their freshness quotient, just order spinach with cottage cheese (palak paneer) and based on the darkness of the spinach, you can judge how old it is.

Lastly - Other things: Just make sure you check your receipt before you pay as I noticed some add-ons on items that we didn't order or were supposed to be a part of the complimentary condiments. This is a very common issue with the Indian restaurants and usually, people don't even check what they are paying for.

Hopefully, this review helps the future guests of this restaurant and also the restaurant owner to improve the quality and...

This was my first and my last time for this location. The worst experience ever with awful customer service. I went there after viewing 4 star for this place thought it would be wonderful after having a such an long and tired day. It was buffet time and we choose buffet as well dinning. The guy manager didn't have no manner to treat the new customer, matter of fact he just want to take new guests who came after us and left us in between many time, we thought it was busy time so it was understandable. Then when we finally got our food, the puri was hard to chew, my mom's vegetable soup was horribly nasty taste as well our tomato soups. My mother's Sweet lassi was so sour in taste, When the guy manager came back to ask us how was our food, I told him about we didn't like soup, so he simply said," oh! your taste-buds may not be supporting you at this moment? really?. So he didn't ask for to make it again or do correction for us. We ate the food anyway as we were so exhausted and hungry. but to be honest, this wasn't acceptable. And finally, we came to pay our bill, so the guy manager said wait a moment so I said okay, and then he came back after little bit, and we was about to start to taking my money and he saw someone came there for dine in so he left us half way and went there to treat them without asking us and when he came back no apology for doing this to us, he just started to take money and he just said its done, so I asked where is my receipt so first he said he cant get it and then he said let me try to get it so he finally gave me receipt but it was only showing total on it so I asked him, can I please have itemize receipt so he said no he cant give it to me he cant go back now to print that receipt it wont let him do. Thank you so much for giving such an...