Royal Indian Grill — Restaurant in City of Syracuse

Hours online aren’t accurate. Drove about an hour from Oswego to SU Hill to eat here, online it said they were open til ten and I got there at roughly 8:15. We had to pay full price for a buffet that was already gone (they didn’t even have rice out.) they brought out an order of chicken tikka to the table to make up for it and it wasn’t even the same as the tikka on the buffet. When I tried to order off the menu because I was still hungry, they looked at me like I was an idiot and informed me that the kitchen was closed (this was over an hour before it says they close on their website, and there were still tables coming in after us.) I work in a restaurant so I understand on a dead Monday night you might close early, but they gotten 5 new tables in a 20 minute time span- not slow enough to close early imo. Felt terrible for the people who came in after us bc the buffet was literally empty. Nobody offered us drinks besides water or to look at a menu, which sucks bc I would have ordered a beer and a lassi and would have taken food home with me for later. Buffet food that was available was dried out and crusted over, and the tikka had a really weird sweet taste I’ve never experienced before. Overall just felt like a waste of money and a trip- It’s a really big pet peeve to leave a restaurant still hungry. Try Sahota Palace on old Liverpool road if you want good Indian food and good service! Especially for how annoying parking in the SU area, it isn’t worth it to come here. If you want to close early just change your hours to reflect that, because if I had known they were going to be closing around us I would have just stayed home. Also, I didn’t get to try the vegetable Samosas, which is super disappointing bc that’s what I was craving and drove an hour for...

It pains me to leave this review because the food is good for the price if you get the buffet, but the service is god AWFUL and has been getting worse (NOT the workers' fault). There's literally no one in sight when you walk in most of the time. You'll discover quickly that it's because the owner has ONE poor guy working as the only host, the only waiter, the only bus boy, and even as a cook literally half the time. The worst part is they are not hiring! No hiring signs and the workers (who are great people) have told me that this is how the owner wants it when I've asked. The owner seems to own several Indian restaurants in town and the business model for this one is LITERALLY bad service in order to cut down on labor costs. I wouldn't be surprised if he's violating labor laws too with some of these guys--many of them arrived relatively recently from India and speak...

This is the best Indian we’ve had in Syracuse by far! Incredible value if you do the buffet, they even offer the deal for takeout- you can go in and fill up a box from the buffet for $13, and the portions are hefty. You cannot get better value for the money (perhaps unless you go for fast food), and the food is perfect every time.

Their naan is to die for, and they’ve made it fresh and especially for us each time we’ve gone in. This is not overbearing tableside service like many of the sit-down restaurants in the area, but we’ve never minded just having to raise a hand or getting someone’s attention to help us. The staff is polite and highly responsive, and the quality of the food speaks for itself. I cannot recommend Royal Indian Grill enough, especially if you’re in search of good takeout on a college...