Little India Restaurant & Bar Highlands — Restaurant in Denver

I live in the area and frequently go to Himchuli's and occasionally Spice Room, so thought I'd give these guys a try. To start - the server was incredibly nice.

The bad: She was new, clearly had no idea what she was doing because no one had trained her. She didn't even know how the spice levels worked when we told her how spicy we wanted our dishes. Apparently they don't have different spice levels, you just get what they have by default for the dish. I could be wrong but would have no way of knowing. They also dropped off some masala starter dish (which was nice) but no server could actually tell us what the name of it was or what was in it. They had no working brew taps. They were also out of the first wine we ordered.... The men's room paper towel dispenser wasn't working. One of the plates they put on our table was very, very dirty. To top if all off we ordered naan, which never came, and then it ended up on our bill (after discussing with the server she eventually took it off).

Now onto the food: It is very, very clear that this isn't high quality, authentic Indian food like they brand it. Their rice was overdone and soggy/mushy. Not sure if it was the cooking or just bad ingredients. There was a consistent theme among all their dishes we tried and papadum sauces of oversweetness. It's like they added sugar or some caramelized something to their dishes to add flavor, but instead just gave them all over-sugary tastes. The Saag Paneer was sooo creamy from whatever fat or cream they added that there was absolutely no texture, and the taste was just gross. The homemade cheese was a rubbery texture lacking flavor. The masala sauce was way too sugary and didn't even really taste Indian. Honestly everything tasted like they started out trying to make Indian dishes but then started adding sweeteners and fats in to give it more flavor bc they couldn't figure out how to make them decent with regular Indian spices.

Price: This place is more expensive than both Spice Room & Himchulis. The wine is overpriced for what you get. The same dishes at Himchulis are consistently 2-4 dollars cheaper, and Himchulis actually makes authentic Indian/Nepalese food. It's not even a comparison, Himchuli's food has great flavor that clearly was well thought out with the right amount of different spices added to it, while Little India just adds sweeteners from all we can tell. Spice Room is another great option.

Lastly - to the owners leaving snarky comments to the other people leaving bad reviews - that makes absolutely no one want to support you, even if you are local.

In sum - go somewhere else for wayyyy higher quality food that is cheaper, where there is better trained staff and much...

So you know, every restaurant has 3 solid components that either make it or break it. The obvious one is food of course, the service and lastly (not many think of this one) where how an issue is treated.

I think this restaurant has amazing potential.

We ordered a few drinks (great cocktails by the way), two appetizers and three entrees.

We ordered the onion bhajia and lamb sheekh kabab as appetizers. The onion bhajia came out really cold but they were gracious enough to give us a fresh batch. I have to point out, it is not the onion bhajia you would find in Maharashtra but nevertheless, the flavor was spot on. The lamb sheek kabab was sad. It was dry and overcooked. Lacked flavor and just didn't do it for us.

For the mains, we ordered a vegetarian biryani, paneer makhani and lamb curry. The 2 vegetarian dishes were really good. Especially the biryani. The lamb dish, while the flavor of the gravy was really really good, the lamb itself was overcooked and really chewy. Our server, Adhish Shetty, a spectacular host was super polite, apologetic and knew how to fix an issue. He asked if we would like to try the same curry but with chicken instead (that got me nervous as 'most' Indian restaurants tend to get the chicken dry). I responded saying 'Sure as long as it's not dry'. He said I'll make sure this one is good.

After a while, the chicken came out and the chicken was cooked PERFECTLY. It was soft, moist and had picked up the flavor of the gravy so beautifully. We had it with the chili naan (one of the best naans I've had outside of India). We let Adhish know that the naan was just spectacular and the chicken dish was outstanding.

He requested the chef to come out to meet us. The chef's name is Shabaaz from Punjab in Pakistan, close to Lahore. That was a great touch. We expressed our gratitude to the chef and had a great conversation.

The naan was so wonderful. It was not super crispy nor was it extremely soft. It had just the right amount of chew to it and held its own. You could have it on its own.

The interiors of this restaurant is very interesting and beautiful. It has a fireplace surrounded by I think 10 to 12 high chairs (that's where we ate). Has a classy vibe.

The folks here know how to treat their customers, take constructive criticism well and act to issues by actually fixing the issues. A restaurant having folks like these here is a blessing to the restaurant in my opinion. Just shows that they want to pursuit that perfection. If we get a chance, will definitely visit one more time before we leave Denver...

Restaurant Week Review: Yes the restaurant week deal is a for sure thing but like every great deal, it comes with some caveats. We arrived at 6:30pm on a Wednesday and after waiting for around 20 minutes with a line that was out the door were finally put on the wait list. We were told it would be about an hour and a half and that the kitchen was very backed up so although a few tables were available, they weren’t sitting them to keep guests from having to wait 2 hours for their food. We went across the street and had some drinks before coming back. We arrived back at the restaurant as they were calling me to inform me a table was ready. The restaurant week deal is as advertised for single diners and slightly different for couples. If you are sitting in a group, each pair gets 2 bottles of wine (one to drink and one to take home) one appetizer (restaurant was out of 2 options otherwise any was fine), 2 entrees which was literally anything on the menu except one particular lamb dish, and two desserts which had a few exceptions as well. After dinner, each check/table received a $20 gift card to use in April. My overall experience and that of the 3 people with me was excellent. The food was amazing and authentic and the server was as attentive as possible considering there were only 2 servers and a bartender for the whole restaurant. What everyone needs to remember is that this is the best deal for restaurant week in the Denver metro and as a result the place is incredibly busy. The staff tries their hardest but some of the meals take a decent amount of time to prepare and therefore it’s not surprising the kitchen was backed up. Overall, this restaurant has earned my business and I will 100% be back but not during restaurant week unless it is early afternoon or late night on a weekday. With anything I feel there are three things to want but you can only have two. Here you have great quality food and save money but it comes at the sacrifice of your time. If you’re good with that, you will have a great time. If you’re not alright with that, you should probably come back after restaurant week for the great food, ambiance,...