Madurai Kitchen — Restaurant in Elk Grove Township

During the Labor day weekend when we were in Chicago (09/04 - Sun), we tried the Madurai kitchen restaurant based on couple of our friends recommendation.

Good things first - The restaurant was very clean and the ambience was good. Friendly staff. Food was served pretty quick without much of a delay. All the good stuff ends here.

Chicken 65: It was OK. Well cooked but with a little less salt Boneless chicken Biriani: OK as well. Nothing special but not bad either. Typical Indian restaurant taste Paneer 555: Tasted really bad. Looked like they used a wing sauce or a buffalo sauce of a combination of both. Definitely some off the shelf sauce was used but not prepared ground up Indian sauce. Shrimp Varuval: Not sure if the restaurant knows the meaning of the word varuval which means fried. Was expecting a deep friend shrimp but got shrimp cooked with sauteed onions/spices and sauce. The onion and other spices were not cooked/sauteed well and had a raw smell. The spices/onion/tomato never got blended with the Shrimp to extract the flavor. It was like cooked shrimp mixed with half way cooked onions and spices. Chicken Chalna: Tasted horrible with no flavor and less salt. Never had such a bad chalna in my entire life having been to hundreds of restaurants/street foods in southern tamilnadu especially madurai/virudunagar/sivakasi. Chicken Kothu Parotta: Not chopped fine. Pieces were big and it was not well done. Typicall kothu parotta should be chopped into small pieces and cooked well with curry to get it soft and dry. It was like someone chopped the parotta into big pieces, added some chicken salna (which was bad), heated it for a min and served. A clumpy mess. Parotta: I am 99% confident that it was a frozen parotta not freshly prepared one. Too oily and tasted like a frozen one cooked in tawa with oil. Not fresh at all.

Overall salt was less across the board on all dishes which contributed more to already bad tasting dishes. Provided the feedback to the waitress and the response from her was to let the cook know. That's all. She never got back to us with any response. I believe they are incrementally gathering feedback from the customers and learning how to cook/improve the food taste.

Regarding the quantity as a few other reviews mentioned, the curry was served on a standard size container (compared to any Indian restaurant) however they were trying to play it smart by making it 1 inch thick at the bottom on a 3 inch height container effectively cutting 1/3 volume. Very little quantity for the price they charge.

In a nutshell, its an absolute disgrace for them to use the word "Madurai" at all. Hate these restaurants calling themselves Madurai, Dindukal, Virudhunagar just for marketing hype without knowing what they are doing.

Still on the hunt for the two friends (not sure what kind of grudge both had on us) who referred me to this restaurant

Can attach the receipt as a proof if needed since it looks like the restaurant owner calls every critic feedback as fake...

With one waitress/usher/cleaner and a couple of cooks/waiters/cleaner, Madurai Kitchen is able to cater to a full house of guests on a busy Father's Day weekend. There are about 10 - 12 tables of different seating arrangements. The atmosphere is simple with a couple of Madurai temples, gopurams, etc. Be prepared for long wait and missed orders, frustration, desperation, and other typical issues with understaffed, overworked employees. We entered the restaurant at 11:30 am when they opened and we had not exited the restaurant until well after 1:30 pm.

The menu is good with a lot of South Indian items like Chettinadu, Karaikudi, and the likes. Some of the items are not available, so be sure to check with the waitress before you start drooling with the thoughts of the dish. We were told no crab items were available, and some of the items that we ordered were unavailable for reorder.

The shrimp 555 is good and is like a typical south Indian style with coarsely ground ingredients that enhance the taste. The mutton chukka is ok and tasted strongly of star anise. The mutton was also a bit stringy and contained the outer fat film that made it difficult to cut. The non-vegetarian thali is good, but we were already full and could hardly eat everything. The veggies bowls were the best like beetroot kootu, dal, rasam, etc. The sambar, meat, and fish bowls were average. The kesari is good and well made. The rose milk accompanying it was strong in taste of the essence.

The fish curry and the Karaikudi curry looked similar, though the latter was with chicken. The fish comes with a choice of Mackerel or Pompano. With so much delay and long wait, there was no opportunity for any desserts.

Overall, I think the starter items are certainly good, but the thali is mediocre along with the...

I wish there was an option to give negative ratings for service.

I visited this place on April 10, 2025 for dinner and the service was simply pathetic. Firstly the table wasn't cleaned well as crumbs of food from the previous customers was present on it.

We ordered soup and veg pakoda for appetizers for which they took more than half hour and even before serving the appetizers the waiter came and asked us to place the order for the main course! I refused and asked them to first serve the appetizer before we ordered anything else. The soup was ok but the Veg Pakoda had excess salt. I later placed an order for Veg Kothu Parota which was served in about 15 minutes and it tasted ok. We later placed an order for Tea and Kheer - both of which were average.

Overall the service was super slow as the waiters in charge were completely inconsiderate of other customers except for a group of 5-6 middle aged men. The waitress was busy chatting with them all the time and was least bothered about other customers. They were taking orders only from them and their food / alcohol was getting served real quick while we had to wait.

She was discussing her personal life, education, job referrals etc while we kept waiting for our check until I got up and protested against their irresponsibility towards other customers.

I am totally disgusted with this kind of service and I'll never step into this place again and good luck with having such irresponsible and inconsiderate staff who'll make sure that you lose...