India Grille — Restaurant in Chadds Ford Township

Decent atmosphere, mediocre food, weirdly argumentative service.

Came in with my parents as we were in town for the night and craving Indian food. The servers were very polite and formal at first, but as other reviews have mentioned they seemed under staffed and wait times were a bit long.

I ordered masala chaye, which according to the menu was supposed to come without milk. It came with milk but the server had already left by the time we noticed. We waited about ten minutes for them to come back so we could request the right tea. They never showed up so we finally decided to just drink it as is; it tasted fine and we can all drink milk so not a big deal.

Maybe another ten minutes after that another server showed up with an appetizer platter we didn’t order. This has happened at other restaurants, again not a big deal, but when we told him we hadn’t ordered it he looked confused and called over our original server. The original server immediately started insisting that we had ordered it and claiming “I asked you three times” (which he hadn’t, but also, what? Why would they ask us again if we wanted an appetizer after we’d already said no?). This became an ongoing debate - as I’ve mentioned, I think it’s common for restaurants to screw up orders, but this was the first time I’ve been argued with when it happens.

After this, they brought out our main dishes - garlic naan, vegetable curry, malai kofta. All acceptable, but only the naan was what I would call “good”. We’d ordered raita to go with our dinner - the server quite obviously forgot about this but pretended it was “on its way”. When it arrived another ten minutes later, we’d started on the food so it wouldn’t get cold - almost pointless to have the raita at this point. However, I happen to really love raita so decided to just take it. Unfortunately, at the first bite it was evident something in the raita was bad; either the yogurt or the vegetables or the dish itself was clearly starting to spoil. When we brought this up to our server he, shockingly, insisted that it wasn’t bad because a) he’d “made it myself” (not sure how this was relevant) and b) “we’ve changed the recipe” (again, unless the recipe calls for composting vegetables, not what we were trying to tell him).

I should add here that none of us were rude or argumentative - we were actually trying to help them at this point by alerting them before another customer got spoiled raita. But every issue was met by defensiveness, weird passive aggression, and refusing to resolve the issue. They also never offered to, or asked how they could, solve any of the problems.

Overall? Atmosphere - 4, food -...

Me and my husband used to come here at least twice a month we haven’t been back in over a month last the time we went the food was good as always is always very good tasty cooked how you want it we came and the buffet was basically over the waiter who we get often says oh y’all can go to the buffet it’s ok you two come all the time your good soon s as we got a little food on our plate a guy comes from the back he starts taking the food away and cleaning up the buffet area so our server was like oh what else do you want get more plates so you can put food on the because we have to clean this area up like 3 minutes from us walking in the door and putting a little food on our plate we both looked at each other and felt really rushed so we got a little more food before they put everything away so of course our other plate of food got every cold so we was like can we take this with us it wasn’t even much food so I was always confused on why he charged us so much to take it he said no I have to charge you it gets weight so we talking to ourself like that’s crazy you said we was ok to come in for this lunch buffet then you take the food away and rush us charge us 17.99 for both of our lunch buffets and then charged us almost the same amount twine again to take the food I told my husband lets just leave the food we came for lunch and was not expecting to spend over 60$ that was insane we both said for all that we could’ve very well just ordered off the menu got what we wanted ate and still had left overs for the price on the menu we felt really odd we thought that was kind of crazy I told my husband he should’ve asked for the owner because he knows us very well and I’m sure he would’ve said oh no and would’ve have agreed that we shouldn’t had to pay all that money for such little food but I guess they have been slow and maybe trying to get all they can but that’s not the way to go about thing such ashame because we really love the food we will return but most likely it will be take out only never the buffet again that’s out so if your going to the buffet FYI if it’s close to the time being over don’t get even if they still say you still can just order a meal of the menu that was like a set up to me and I know the owner isn’t like that we was also very shocked because the sever is usually ok not sure if what was going on that day but...

Nov. 2021 Update:

We’d been in the mood for Indian food so we decided to give them another shot. Our spice level seemed to be consistent with the number we ordered! We’re definitely open to ordering again now.

Original Review (4 stars):

India Grille has great food, but inconsistent spice levels. We used to order from here weekly until around August 2020 when they switched from spice levels measured by “mild, medium, hot” to spice levels measured on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the spiciest). Since they switched, the spice level has been so consistently inconsistent that as of April 2021 we can’t order from here anymore.

We usually order a 5, 6 or 7 (it’s varied as we’ve tried to adapt to their new level of measuring spice). There have been times when we’ve ordered a 6 and received a 10 (so spicy it’s unenjoyable) while other times we’ve ordered a 6 and received a 1. More often than not it’s so spicy that we have to throw it out.

Disappointed that such a seemingly minor issue has ruined India Grille for us, we have called them after receiving food at the wrong spice level. They kindly offered to replace both dishes at no cost. However, the next time we ordered we had the same issue. We have also tried calling before ordering food to try and ensure the spice level will be comparable to our request. This has also proven to be fruitless.

I wish they would use a system to ensure the spice level will be consistent each time (i.e., a 6 spice will indeed be a 6 level spice). After at least 10 orders with this problem, I can say with confidence that the kitchen only estimates how much spice to add.

If you take anything away from this review, just be aware of this spice variation...