Kanak Indian Kitchen — Restaurant in Charlottesville

Really a 4.5 experience, but 5 is perfect, and that's hard to achieve.

You have to wonder about 1 and 2 star reviews when so many are 5 star...don't you? Clearly an "individual" thing.

We were a party of four, for dinner. At 6PM on a Tuesday they were not very busy, so being seated wasn't a problem.

I'm not a big fan of Indian food but my parents are, so my wife and I went along. Our server was a LOT of help to me to identify a few meals that might fit my palate. I don't want my dinner to be sweet, have fruit in it or spices like cinnamon...that's just not dinner to me, but IS most of Indian food.

I really enjoyed my dinner selection, as did everyone else. The food was good, and I really like how they can dial-in the spice level for dishes. I wanted a 3 out of 5...just a bit more than medium spice, and they hit it perfectly. My wife was a little disappointed in the amount of shrimp she got with her meal, and with no vegetables in the dish, she wasn't very full. For the price of the dish, that should not be a complaint. She liked the flavors though.

Service was mostly good. No major complaints. I think it may have been a little more sluggish if they had been busy. They were probably at 25% capacity, so not a lot of stress on their system at the time.

Why take off a point? The chairs are hard and uncomfortable. There are no cushions and no form to the wood seats to fit your bottom. Fortunately my wife took the chair and gave me the booth. She has a little bit more cushion back there than me and I have some hip problems. She and my dad who sat in a chair said they were very uncomfortable. Bring a cushion with you! Fortunately we were served and were finished in a fairly short time.

Another bugaboo of mine is table space vs. the serving dishes, etc.. The size of the tables is not large. They have a nice little flower vase and a candle in the middle of the table. Problem is they are immediately in the way if you order an app or anything to share that makes sense to put in the center of the table, so they quickly just became a nuisance off to the side. Same with the bottle of water. A bottle of water is nice so you don't have to wait for a refill, but it takes up real estate on the table too.

Their serving dishes are really nice, as is the flatware rolled in a very nice cloth napkin, but the table felt a bit claustrophobic with all the dishes with four diners. Two people would have ample space at these tables.

They still have good space between tables. A relic of the  Plandemic I am happy about. I don't like eating really close to strangers.

I would come back here. There were a couple more dishes the server...

I wanted to like this place more than I did. Decided to take a chance when in the area, seemed like a cool new spot.

I’ll start with the positives. The interior of the space was beautiful and very relaxing. I liked the vibe in there. I started by ordering a mango lassi and their chili paneer, which were both delicious. I really enjoyed the texture of the paneer - crispy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside. The lassi was creamy and light.

Unfortunately, a strong start ended up being the peak of the experience. For an entree I ordered their chicken Patia with some garlic naan. The first thing I noticed when it came out was a long black hair in my rice. I’m not usually one to let stuff like that bother me, but still, not something you want to see. I had never seen nor heard of patia before, but it was far too sweet for my liking. Some of that is definitely user error for not asking, but it just missed the mark a bit for me. The naan needed more ghee… it was pretty on par the frozen garlic naan I occasionally buy from Trader Joe’s. I will say though, the portions on everything I ordered were more than generous for the price point, which was much appreciated.

The service was adequate. The table next to me didn’t seem very familiar with Indian cuisine and as such, had about a million questions for the server, so I became a bit of an afterthought. She didn’t ask for a spice level on my entree, maybe the default is mild for what I ordered but she asked the other table, so not sure what’s going on there. That’s fine though, I know my way around a menu.

I’m glad I tried it. It’s decent. But I’ve...

While the food was good the staff just wasn't on it the night we were in. As a parent of two kids they broke the number one rule; they forgot to put the kids meal in. This error resulted in the adult food coming out and nothing for the kids. The next time we server came around she asked if we had everything and I mentioned the kids meal and she just said oh I'll go check on that. She apologized shortly after and said "the kitchen is working on that now, 3-5 minutes." Needless to say the food came out over ten minutes later while our kids watched us eat food which was too spicy for them to even consider. Once their plate came out of course it was so hot the kids couldn't eat anything for another 5+ minutes

To add insult to injury, as we are preparing to asking for boxes for leftovers they bring us an "I'm sorry" tapioca pudding stating it was on the house. This was the wrong thing, we didn't need more food. The kids meal should have been free if anything. I hope the management is paying attention to this and changes the approach in these situations. We spent $100 on dinner for two adults and two kids and they just couldn't get it right.

Also, there was something we noticed on the menu that was labeled as gluten free but clearly stated it had semolina in it. Not sure if they meant semolina flour or something else but this gave us...