India's House — Restaurant in Columbia Township

I have been eating at India's House since 2019 when I first moved to Columbia. Initially, this place was a solid 5/5 stars. The food was great, the service was great, and the portions and pricing was great. However, this has continually downtrended over the last few years, after what I think is due to a change in ownership (source: when picking up my food one time I spoke with the guy working up front and he said he was selling the place to a different owner.)

Of note, nearly all of this also applies to Taj Mahal in Columbia as well. It is very sad there are no good places in Columbia for Indian food anymore.

Food: The food is still good, but what use to be a 5/5 for taste is now a 3/5. It is just not as good as it use to be. I am sure some recipes have changed over the years, but they weren't changed in a good way in my opinion. My other critique of the food, and the reason I gave it a 2/5, is the portion size, and I think this stems from the new owner being VERY cheap. When you order an entree it comes with the main dish in one container and rice in another. The rice for one person use to come in the average size to-go container (roughly 9x9in) and was packed full of rice. This has shrunk A LOT over the last few years. At first it became a smaller to-go container (about 5x5in) for one person and the average size for 2 people, both still packed full. Now you will be lucky if you get the 5x5 container half full for a one-person order or the 9x9 container half-full for a two person order. This is ridiculous because everyone knows how cheap rice is, so there is no reason they started skimping out on rice. The last time I ate there I ordered and paid for extra rice because there was 2 of us and I knew they would try to short the rice. They didn't even give us an extra container of rice. They just gave the same 9x9in container and filled it a little more full. Additionally, the size of the main entrees has also gotten much smaller. The current amount of food you get is about 1/3 to 1/2 the amount of food you got when I first began eating at this restaurant in 2019.

Service: On top of drastically shrinking portion sizes, they have also increased their prices a lot over the years. Since 2019, the prices are about $3-4 higher than what they use to cost. Which is a big difference when the current price is around $13-14 for the entrees I order. Having made many of these meals at home before for less than $2 a serving, it just sucks that we now have to pay outrageous prices for an ever decreasing quality of food. Long story short, when they tell you it will take 45 minutes for your order to be ready, don't be surprised if it takes them 1.5-2 hours. As a diabetic I have to pre-bolus my insulin before meals, so I will bolus right before going to get my order (about a 5 minute drive for me). Even when showing up 15 minutes after the time I was told my food would be ready just to be safe, they took anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour longer which has caused me to become hypoglycemic on more than one occasion.

Atmosphere: Again, the current owner is CHEAP. One time when eating in the restaurant he brought out the wrong order for the person I was there with. When we told him, did he offer to remake it or give a discount? NO! He tried to get us to take the food we didn't order AND pay the full price of what we ordered. We had to negotiate with him for several minutes to get him to make us the food we actually ordered. Another nightmare of a dining experience actually happened at the same visit as this prior example. He discovered we went to MU and began ranting to us about how he went to MU hospital for constipation and how mad he was that they didn't give him a colonoscopy in the ER. That is not my fault or my problem dude, why are you complaining to your customer about this? He has no idea where the boundary is for how you communicate...

*I WALKED OUT FROM THE RESTAURANT DUE TO AWFUL SERVICE *

**SUCH DISRESPECTFUL BEHAVIOR *

The worst experience that I ever had in MY LIFE SO FAR **

I have never given a google review so far even when the food too worst because I accept truth that every time we can’t expect same taste being said this I really felt to give a review about this particular restaurant .

Here is why

I have never seen a person like that old fellow who is in that restaurant at front desk. I respect elders a lot , and that’s what our parents taught us but I had to call him as old fellow because of his extremely rude behavior what he did today at restaurant. Here comes the story

After seeing google reviews I thought it’s a nice place to go and eat. I was planning from couple of days but didn’t get chance to go but today I made it.

The time when I entered in to the restaurant there was another person who walks in-front of me with an old women. I waited for them to get in first and then I went inside. There are almost 15 tables out there among which only two were occupied , myself standing near to the door and the old lady and a person who comes with her standing just next to me. The girl who works there looked at me and show her hand towards a table , what I thought was, she wants me to go and sit in that particular table. Hence I stared moving towards that table .

Here comes that old fellow yelled at me saying where r u going ? Who comes first ? And all this language what he is use is like countryside. I was sooo pissed off and i am trying to control my tension and said slowly like I thought she ( the worker) asked me to go. Even then he is not reducing his voice and i feel really AWKWARD as other country people are sitting there. Being from India( old fellow) he doesn’t know how to respect people and it was quite shocking to me.

I WALKED OUT FROM THE RESTAURANT DUE TO AWFUL SERVICE.

I would really say even our boss will not should at us such way even when u do a blunder mistake. I am not sure what THIS OLD FELOW thinking of himself . I am sure that None of the proper business mind set person will do this.

ITS REALLY SHAMEFUL *

I HAVE NEVER SEEN A PERSON LIKE THIS IN MY LIFE SO FAR.

I THANK GOD FOR THAT TO NOT TO SHOW THIS TYPE OF...

I went to eat at India House yesterday. I am Indian, so I always look forward to eating at Indian restaurants. I looked at the buffet and for $10 it's decent. When I took a bit of the chicken tikka masala, I discovered it was raw and spit it out! I called over the older lady who showed us to our table. I showed her the chicken and she just looked at me. Finally, she said that they cook all of their food and that it was cooked. I remarked that I know what cooked chicken looks and tastes like. She walked away from after that. As an Indian, I know that the quality of Indian will vary from location. However, cooked versus raw, does not change. If the lady had simply apologized and taken the plate, I would have gone up and taken something else from the buffet. Instead, she tried to make me feel like I did something wrong. As I sat there not eating, the staff ignored me. Finally, I called another lady over and told her that the chicken was raw and that I am not paying for the buffet. She told the other lady and both of them along with another young man continued to ignore me. My dining partner ate his food quickly and I had to ask the younger lady to take my plate for me. When he finally finished his food, we went up to the counter to pay. The young man who was probably related to the owner charged us for one buffet and ignored me.

All they ever had to do was apologize when I called the older lady over the first time. When I had to ask them about this, they said they apologized three times. This clearly was a lie and they have no idea about customer service. I am sorry to say that their Indian food was bland and flavorless but I could have overlooked that. Their customer service was horrendous and while I was at the restaurant, I posted pictures of the raw chicken on Four Square, twitter and Facebook making sure to connect it to the India House check in. I checked their health department inspection and noticed it was from a year ago and somehow they got an A. This Indian...