Sitar Indian Cuisine — Restaurant in Chattanooga

No complaints really on the food. It's always good. Been eating here for years. The 1 star review is mostly because the owner Kumar is a THIEF!!! I originally placed our order online through dinners delivered as we were about 15 mins away. The app doesn't say what the wait time will be until after the order is placed. Once it was placed it gave us a 1.5 hour wait for the food which we were not about to wait for. When we got there my husband went in and asked if he received the order and if it would actually be a 1.5 hour wait. The place was pretty dead as usual post covid. They still hadn't received the order yet and the Manager Kumar told my husband if he cancelled the order we could get it cheaper and quicker by placing a new order in person so he did. I tried to contact dinners delivered through all means possible to cancel but their customer service is severely non existent. Kumar told my husband he would also cancel this online order once it came through. By the time we got our 2nd order the online order still hadn't come through, but we had to get home so we left. Kumar actually ended up marking our online order as "picked up" which I verified online in my account. I disputed the first charge with my cc company and explained what happened. My husband also called the restaurant as we live an hour away and spoke to kumar who remembered him and the situation. He told Kumar we were not able to get in contact with anyone from dinners delivered to cancel and they were trying to say the food was picked up. Kumar said he would tell them it was not if they contacted him which was obviously a lie because my dispute was declined due to the order being marked as picked up and no one else to say different at the restaurant. They said I need a letter from the restaurant stating we never got the first online order to open the case back up and issue me the refund, but now Kumar has been MIA and avoiding our calls because he wants to keep my money. We get the run around every single time we call and we've been trying to reach him for a week and a half now. They just lost our business. We won't ever be...

I order from here at least once a month and the food is usually top notch! my wife and I love the food here. Last week we ordered the chicken tikka masala (which we order every time), and it was basically just tomato sauce. there was no spice. The rice was bland, and the onion bhaja that we ordered was also not as good as it normally is. We will definitely order from here again, but i hope it was just a bad day for them! EDITED ON 8/31/21

ordered again today (thru DoorDash). Food arrived cold (the dasher was on time and very fast), the chicken tikka masala was very watery tomato sauce, no spices, no flavor. Onion bhaja tasted old. I called this time to talk to them about it and Kumar said that the recipe was the same as it always was, that he’d check on it, and while I was still talking hung up on me. Hanging up on a customer is never a good business practice, and now I can see why there are so many reviews saying the customer service is rude! So they decided to call us back, I spoke to Bitu (sorry if I spelled that wrong) and he said that it’s because it had been sitting there for an hour before the dasher got there, and that’s why the food tasted bad. Ive had their curry cold before and it was never this bad. I reheat their curry all the time and it tastes just as good if not better the longer it waits. The sauce is so so so watery and I can tell that’s why the taste is so bland. I explained this to him and he said I can say whatever I want because he’s confident in his food. I’m confident I will never order from here again and I will never recommend this...

Man, sitar has gone downhill. They are a staple of downtown Chattanooga and I was excited to take my gf there for their buffet. Turns out the buffet was done away with in lieu of lunch specials. Okay cool, that’s fine. The food was okay. The special came with two curries and a soup. The naan was very good but not the best I’ve ever had. The special was fine but the soup that came with it was just watery chicken broth that really just wasn’t that good I didn’t even finish mine.

My main issue was hygiene. The food was clean nothing gross there but their men’s bathroom was so disgusting I could smell it from where I was sitting in the restaurant. I eventually had to use the restroom to wash my hands and when I walked in the smell of urine was so over powering I literally almost threw up my lunch special I had just consumed. This is completely unacceptable. Cleaning a bathroom is not the most fun thing in the world but throw on some elbow high gloves and get in there with some bleach and fabulouso every morning. I bet that bathroom hasn’t been properly cleaned in over a Month if not months. It smelled like a rest stop or truck stop bathroom and like I said the smell was so intense it permeated into the dining area which is just crazy. Not sure what the employees or owner are thinking.

The interior hasn’t been updated in years. It’s obvious the people who run this place have lost their way. Sitar used to be a jewel of downtown Chattanooga when they had the buffet it was always packed. Now it’s a shell of its former self and I’ll never go back...