Flavors of Nawab — Restaurant in Ellington

Driving back home from Hartford to the Boston area, my wife searched Google for a place to eat off I-84, and Flavors of Nawab was her excellent choice. The reviews were a little overwhelmingly positive, which left us a little suspicious: Did they hire an unscrupulous firm to make up reviews? Turns out, it's just that good.

The food and service are top notch. Everything we ordered was a little different from other places, in the way that every family has their own recipes, their own take on classic dishes. But more importantly, everything was delicious.

My wife ordered the mutton korma, and we shared the pani puri appetizer, palak paneer, and their home made mint-lime drink, all wonderful. Some people might be a little hesitant about the thin sauce that comes with the pani puri: it smells a little sulfurous, but don't be discouraged. It tastes fantastic.

The acid from the lime and the cooling from the mint helped with the spiciness, but even without that, the flavors would have kept me digging in. The entrées alone would have earned the 5 star rating, but it all worked so perfectly together.

Dessert was something I had never tried: falooda with ice-cream. The high quality but straightforward Ice-cream with a red syrup was on top of a delicious pudding with, I think, noodles mixed in! Sounds weird to this American, but it was great, and made a nice pairing, different textures, different temperatures, different flavors...

And if all this wasn't enough, as we were driving away, they chased us down... my wife had left her purse, and they sprinted across their parking lot to make sure we didn't drive off!

We pass this way frequently, driving from the Boston area to points south and west, and I look forward to trying more of their menu.

There is no aspect of this place that is anything other that fabulous.

TL:DR - Eat here. It's...

DO NOT DELIVER FOR THIS PLACE!!! I've done a few deliveries here. Two of them they have said they did not receive the order in their system. This of course costs me as a DoorDash driver time and money. I then have to call Dasher support, explain the situation after being on hold for 10 minutes, have dasher support call the restaurant to confirm, and if they don't answer, I get half pay for driving there. If they do and make the food, I have to wait that amount of time. Today however was the last straw.

It was a simple, quick 4 mile $8 order. I get there slightly early, and the restaurant owner says they never received the order. So I do my usual thing, call Dasher support, wait on hold, explain the situation, Dasher support calls the store, and the store either says yes or no. Today the restaurant said they'd make the items but it'd be a 45 MINUTE WAIT!!!. So I explained to support that it's simply not worth it to me as an independent contractor to wait that time and that I'd rather unassign myself from that order and work on the next available one. I unassigned, wasted a total of 30 minutes at the store, which inevitably costed my $8 - $10. That time could've been used to pick up an order that was actually prepared.

I understand technical issues are frustrating. I understand stores get busy and that some things are out of your control. If I had known the order would've taken 45 minutes to be prepared when I arrived, I would've just unassigned immediately. But the fact that they simply costed me money on easily the biggest day for DoorDash deliveries is enough for me to never deliver for these guys again. I recommend all delivery personnel do the same. This restaurant needs to contact DoorDash support and have their system checked for bugs...

Update (April 2023): I definitely need to update this review because although the food is still very good, the consistency has gone way down and the staff is constantly overworked to the point where wait times are huge and pick up orders are often delayed.

The lack of staff to keep up with the demand not only increases wait times (dining in and taking out) but it has changed the quality of several dishes I used to love. A lot of the "65" dishes used to come out crispy and well fried, but now only have a sauce dredging without the extra work that used to go into a second fry/crisping. There's also been some inconsistencies with the naan, and the lamb shank dish. The lamb used to have a very complex, deep and spicy sauce but lately it has been a much simpler (maybe faster to make?) broth. I don't know exactly, but it's changed for the worse.

I still love this place but until they stop overworking their cooks and staff I'm probably going to be avoiding it.

--------old review below--------

Excellent and unique compared to many other indian food in the area. One of the few places that actually spices their food properly, so rejoice if you like things hot and spicy. The Gobi Manchurian, Paneer 65, and fish dishes are out of this world good. That sesame naan too, ugh, I can't stop going here.

Update: Having back multiple times. Have never been disappointed with a dish. The kebab plate is a great way to sample a little of everything and their shish kebabs are fantastic.The pomfret paturi was one of the best and most unique whole fish preparations I've had to date.

Please also try their desserts as the falooda...