Royal India Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Dania Beach

We got here early (6pm). My husband picked this restaurant because it has pretty good reviews. After our experience I feel like the positive reviews must be a lie. The flavors we found have nothing to do with Indian foods.

👌The samosas are large and very full. The vegetables appetizers included samosas, vegetable pakora and fried onions. We only received the samosas and the vegetables pakora. The samosas are stuffed with potatoes and peas, and we enjoyed them, even if you are used to Indian food, these don't have strong flavors, they're very mild. More south american than Indian flavor.

👌The paneer was good, and it came with an abundant sauce. I didn't taste it because my stomach was already upset from the dry pakoras. I spent the rest of the evening drinking glasses of water

👎The vegetables pakora have very little vegetables, no flavor, and they are mainly made of batter, very likely too thick, so they resulted very dry, extremely dry and unpleasant. When eating them, I wondered if they had a new unexperienced cook just practicing how to make them. 🤔

The sauces, minth/coriander (I thought it was coriander sauce, and tamarind (it looked and tasted more like plums, I thought the waitress didn't know what she had served us) were good, but no spices at all. Not really the Indian flavor I was expecting. There was an extra sauce, the curry sauce, which is nice and delicate like a vegetable soup. I drank it like a soup, and then I realized that was not the soup I had ordered.

👎👎kids menu... where to begin? Very disappointing. I'm not really sure if any parent has ever ordered that before for their child and they didn't complain. It wasn't a menu. It should not be, in my opinion, offered as a menu. At least, not like this one they offered us: 4 chunks of dry, dry, and again, extremely dry chicken over a bunch of French fries (the fries were good), over a Naan. Everything was hard and dry. Obviously my 3 years old loved the fries, but not even my husband was able to chew and eat the chicken. Usually I don't let my child eat fried foods, today it was the only option. 👎also the chicken tandoori was too dry, extremely dry..but my husband didn't want to complain, or send it back. he thinks that's the way it is served, and it is his problem if he couldn't eat it.

👎Our server even suggested to order a bread... we did, but we didn't even touch it, because there was nothing humid to combine it to. Our soup never arrived, and now I really wish it did because it would have helped with swallowing the rest..but I was too upset with what we had received, I just wanted to eat quickly and leave.

we all had at least 5 glasses of water each, we couldn't eat the rice because every dish was too dry.

I am really sorry for this negative review, and sorry for the negative experience we had. We really wanted to like this place and relax, skip cooking for the evening, have different food. The way the owner replies to the negative reviews shows how these experience aren't just episodes that can be improved. The owner commented that the food is consistent... well it tasted consistently previously frozen and therefore dry.

I feel like we wasted time and money. I'm not sure if people are happy to work there... Sorry but I would not recommend it nor will go back. There's plenty of good restaurants to choose from.

(PS. The servers (all women) carry really large and heavy trays. The plates they have to serve are very heavy. The sauces hare served in a ceramic bowl on a ceramic plate.. also heavy.. there's not a good organization of the space and energy of the servers. It seems like there's a chaotic use of the resources. Only for the appetizers our table was full of useless plates, very heavy. There was no room. I felt really bad for the servers that have to carry back and forth all those dishes.. I hope they get good tips, despite the terrible food.)

Stay away...

This is based purely on the lunch buffet, incredible value at $9.95. Thrilled they use PAPER STRAWS in drinks .. shows environmental awareness and not polluting oceans! A round of applause for them! The buffet had several vegetarian options including salad (yay! I'm vegetarian so I was delighted). Unfortunately the channa marsala was too spicy for me, but I have an unusually low tolerance for spicy food whereas my husband, who likes spicy food thought it was very good The other dishes had lamb or chicken in them, so I scooped out the sauce to try them. The non descript "chicken curry" was disappointing, lacking flavor, sauce was thin and watery . The rice was yellow rice not basmati, the vegetable pakoras were heavy and stodgy, which is a shame because I'd been looking forward to those . The lamb saga was very good (at least the sauce was), but overall we both found all the food bland and the flavors not well developed. We love aromatic Indian food where the flavors have been coaxed out, and unfortunately it wasn't present in the buffet I'm sure a la carte items like the korma would be good ,and maybe we'll be back for dinner but sadly we weren't impressed by the buffet offerings. The price is unbeatable,, other buffets at other restaurants are $15 or so, but they offer a lot more variety. Mango Lassi excellent, service VERY good, friendly staff easy parking many customers there so obviously a lot of people love the buffet. Don't think they are doing themselves justice with these offerings, maybe a generic butter chicken or something like that would be better and as I said this is based purely on Sunday's lunch buffet, and I'm sure a la carte items would be better. But value and...

Ok where do I start? I want to begin by saying I have lived on Griffin my whole life. I have driven by Royal India for close to 30 years or longer. I've never gone in. I finally came in with my friend & my son. I never had Indian food so I honestly was very lost. I let my friend order for us. We had some sort of BBQ chicken, yellow rice & some kind of spicy curry rice with chicken. Sorry don't remember the proper names. Everything was super good!!! My son had a kids meal & along with it came a nice nan. Not only did my son love the chicken and fries but he tried the nan and liked it. I definitely ate more than half of it. It was AMAZING and it is great on its own!!! Having a picky kid will make you grateful when they actually like something. We then ordered 2 desserts which were completely reasonably priced & delicious. We got to sit near the window which you can enjoy the water view. Also I wanted to sincerely commend the service. Not only was our server super sweet to the adults but super sweet to my son and made him feel special. That means a lot to put effort into making sure he was happy. I also wanted to compliment the fact that literally every server on the floor also asked if they could get us anything. There is nothing wrong with our traditional "you're responsible for your tables" but it is impressive that everyone worked as a team and didn't ignore or pass the task onto someone else. Not one server seemed unhappy or bothered to help any table. My son also noted he "wants to come here every night" so that speaks loud. The art work is beautiful. It was a nice night out. Thank you for the excellent food & service. I hope to come back...