Aadat Cuisine of India — Restaurant in Des Moines

EDIT (lengthy, sorry!) Yash is one of the kindest men I've had the priveledge to speak with. He's so nice! We have ordered here every single night for 3 nights straight since they opened this location! Every single thing we have ordered has been complete perfection. No joke. I can't criticize a single thing, from the food to their service! On point.

Gonna be lengthy... This is a new spot that just opened in the south end. They also have a spot in Redmond (same name) that's been there over 25 years!! And I can see why! This one is so new they aren't even on Yelp yet. Just look at the Redmond yelp for food pics and reviews from this same menu.

The food!!:

TRUFFLE CHILLI GARLIC NAAN It's huge! It was about the size of TWO medium pizza crusts! Oh. My. Goodness! Just delicious. Definitely worth the money. I highly suggest trying this! Easily enough for 3 people.

VINDALOO WITH CHICKEN Also delicious!! I love the potatoes and asked in the notes for extra of them. They obliged. And they were perfectly par cooked. Not mushy like they been stewing in the sauce all day. The sauce color is deeply rich red and beautiful. I am very sensitive to heat so I ordered it mild. Which for most people should be just fine. For ME, it was a tad spicy. But that's just my own sensitivity to heat. I'd still order it again at the same spice level. So good.

FALOODA DRINK (ROSE FLAVOR) First. It's in a bottle, not fresh made in the restaurant. But not a problem for me at all. Normally it would be because I'm bougie like that lol. I love rose flavor anything. It's made by a brand named Bavan. I sucked it down before I even started my meal. So good. Getting the mango flavor next time.

CHIKOO MILKSHAKE The hubz ordered this. Never seen it on a menu so we wanted to try it. If you've ever had milk boiled coffee from an Indian restaurant... It reminded me of that. But a cold version. Its a spiced milkshake. And amazing. Definitely getting this every time we order.

SAAG WITH CHICKEN The hubz dish. He looooves SAAG anything. He always tries this first at a new Indian spot. He's definitely a saag connoisseur. He knows a good vs bad one for sure. He loved it said he would most definitely order it again and again and again.

SIDE OF CUT ONION AND PICKLE I added these on top of my Vindaloo. They are raw cut veggies and also had green chili's (raw). Gave the chilis to the hub for his saag. There are also pickles that are amazingly spiced as well.

BASMATI RICE What can I say. It's rice. Was cooked perfect. We ordered a large and they aren't kidding. We got a huge and heaped, stuffed entree size container full! Two of them!

BONUS: They tossed in a desert for free. The Gulab Jamun. Maybe it tastes soooo good because it was free lol. But kidding aside. Also delicious. It's kinda like a donut hole soaked in syrup of some sort. It's verrrrrrrry sweet. VERY! So if you're diabetic, tread lightly.

PHONE CALL: I called the restaurant to thank them for the free desert and delicious food. The gentleman that answered the phone was almost as sweet as the Gulab Jamun! He was very humble and appreciative of the call. He actually asked for feedback on literally anything about our meal because they are always striving to be even better. I told him it's super rare for me... But I had nothing to advise him could be improved on. This place is just that dang good.

Soooooo.... Needless to say after all of that.... I can't recommend them high enough. Our meal and service was phenomenal. Everything. Can't wait to try...

The restaurant is located inside the Sheraton Four Points and is easily accessible via the lobby.

My dinner companion and I ordered three appetizers and we were warned that we were ordering a lot of food. I felt hungry, my companion felt hungry, we acknowledged but did not heed the warning. We ordered Chicken 65, Fish Pakoras, and Onion Bhaji.

The Chicken 65 was intensely flavorful and quite spicy. I was pleasantly surprised by how good this was. The size of the appetizer was impressive, it was essentially an entree-sized portion of Chicken 65.

I'd seen a couple other reviews mention the Fish Pakoras so I wanted to try those too. I agree with everyone else, very soft and cooked to perfection.

Onion Bhaji is not something I order often, but I opted to give it a try. Both my companion and I enjoyed the sort of "Indian onion ring" (though not in ring form). It is ironically garnished with more onions.

We couldn't finish the appetizers. We ended up getting leftover appetizers and our entrees to go. A single appetizer is probably enough to split for two people. Maybe even 3 people. Anything more than one appetizer is maybe pushing it in terms of spoiling your dinner.

We got Chicken 65 Biryani, Lamb Vindaloo, and Paneer Korma as our take-away items and now that we've tried them all I can confidently say they were all excellent. Even the rice was excellent. We also got some garlic naan, chili truffle naan, and Nutella naan. I just want to say something about that last one: Nutella is not a thing I ever thought about combining with naan, but I'm glad somebody else thought of it and put it on this menu. It's just the right amount of sweet compared with the expected flavor of a good naan.

The only thing that I will say negatively about this place is that their water service wasn't good. I drink a lot of water with my meals and I expect attentive water refills as my water gets low or empty, and they just weren't on the ball with that here. Even after I asked for more water it was still a good 5 minutes before I got it. I think next time I'm going to just ask for a pitcher of water to be left on the table. The service otherwise, with food recommendations, service from the bartender, promptness of food delivery, flexibility in taking the remainder of our order to go, was all excellent.

The atmosphere was great. The lighting was soft, the tables were spaced well apart from one another, the chairs were comfortable and the tableware was very nice. I've attached a couple pictures of the dining area, but I unfortunately forgot to take pictures...

We are regular customers of Kanishka in Redmond and visited this new South Seattle outlet on 12/31/2023 for the New Year brunch. We were very excited to be able to try out all of Kanishka's menu at the lunch buffet. Our lunch turned into a disappointment.

Summary of our experience - vegetarian members of our group ended up with non-vegetarian food on their plates. The management team was supposed to reach back out to compensate for the incident, however, a week on, we haven't heard from them. The buffet menu manages to skirt the star dishes of Kanishka's menu, so we didn't find it our money's worth.

My wife and elder child are pure vegetarians. They both love pasta, so when the spotted pasta salad that was the first thing they served on their plates. When they got to eating it, they discovered that it had chicken. The restaurant had mis-labeled the item merely as pasta salad while omitting that it had chicken. When we called it out, what we found even more disconcerting was that there was confusion if the dish was vegetarian or not! Eventually, when the matter escalated to a lady who seemed to be in charge, they were kind enough to apologize, move the salad to a separate section and label it and offer a gift card as compensation. However, its been over a week since the incident, and we haven't heard back on the compensation.

Lastly, we have a number of favorite dishes in Kanishka, however, we discovered that the buffet had quite a limited selection of the star dishes. A number dishes looked experimental and as far as we are concerned, we'd prefer to drive shorter to Redmond and just order our favorites à la carte.

Update: On the day the incident happened, the restaurant took down our contact number as well as email id. Now, they are asking us to call back to remedy the situation. Not great...