Pippal - Emeryville — Restaurant in Emeryville

I’m from India, and have high standards for Indian food. Ate here a couple of months ago, and have been meaning to write a glowing review ever since.

The restaurant was simply amazing. Food, service, ambience, everything! We went there for a birthday celebration dinner, and ended up being really glad we had picked this place.

First, they have one of the most amazing-tasting cocktails I have ever had: Kerala Backwater. We started with one of those and a Negroni. Between the two of us, we ended up having three more Kerala Backwaters. Part of the reason, though, was that it tasty delicious but there was very little alcohol in it. (The Negroni, in contrast, has the regulation amount of alcohol. I don't know if they read reviews, but they do really need to put more vodka in this drink.)

We had Fish Amritsari for our appetizer. Outstanding, and completely authentic. Entrees were Pepper Crab Meat and Tawa Vegetables. Again, both outstanding. The crab dish seems to have fallen off the menu, which is a real pity. It was $45, if I remember correctly, but they gave such a huge mound of crab meat that it felt like very good value for money. Came with an appam, which is not something you see on Indian restaurant menus in our area very often. The tawa vegetables were really delicious. A very good selection of vegetables, cooked to perfection. Our bread was a Warki Paratha. Wark is edible silver foil. Order this just to try that, if you’ve never had it before. Don’t remember having any desert.

The meal was really memorable. But they have a very, very interesting menu, full of dishes you cannot get anywhere else. So I imagine we’ll try different dishes each time for our first few visits.

I felt the prices were very reasonable for the quality of the food and the fine-dining ambience. And if you get an InKind account, you will get 20% cashback (to spend at any InKind...

Pippal is a regional Indian restaurant which I found very cool. They had dishes from places all over India! I got the lassi and sparkling guava to start. I really liked the lassi which was super creamy and had a prominent rose flavor! The sparkling guava was also super refreshing and had a little bit of spice to it. Then I got the Tunday Kebab which was absolutely BOMB! The goat was so well cooked and had so much flavor. As soon as you bit into it with a little bit of green chutney and paratha it was a flavor overload. Perfect texture too. Then I also got the butter chicken with the butter naan. The butter naan was nothing special, but the butter chicken was absolutely phenomenal I definitely recommend. The chicken was really tender and it also had so much flavor because it was cooked in the curry. The curry itself was also really flavor with spices from all over India like cardamom and more. I also ended with the litti choka I think it was called which was dough balls with some kind of lentil inside. Definitely don’t eat them without putting the clarified butter that is given with the dish because it would be super dry. The vegetables and lentils that came with it were mediocre though. We ended off with desert the moong dal halwa which was sooo good. The texture was a little grainy but I really liked it. It had a lot of clarified butter in it and was so tasty. The shahi tookda on the other hand was unique in a bad way for me. The sweet yellow rabdi on the top tasted a little off for me. The service and ambiance were really cute as it is in anice strip mall and all of the waiters were really kind.OVERALL I definitely reccommend Pippal for some bomb Indian food and if you have the...

TERRIBLE PLACE!!! Wouldn’t recommend to anyone.

I’m from a South Asian heritage and have been to a lot of places serving Indian food. Just moved to Emeryville and thought I found my go to Indian spot. I WAS SO WRONG. I took my friend and we ordered a pav bhaji and a soya matar pulao.

The pav bhaji was decent, a little spicy, but the other dish was totally off. we got a soya chaap curry with no rice. When we called the server, he said that’s what soya matar pulao means. It was just curry, no way that was a pulao. He tried convincing us otherwise and said, “If you feel like you need rice, I can get you some for an extra $6.” We said we were good for now.

Later, when a different server came to give us water, we asked him what the dish was, he said it was soya chaap and that he’d call our original server again. When that server came back, he again tried to convince us it was pulao and even pulled out the kiosk to show the order he placed. It clearly said soya chaap, and I told him that pulao means something with rice. He then said, “Okay, so what do you want to do?”

I said I was okay to get rice that comes with the curry, but he went on about how some curries in the entrees don’t come with rice and that soya chaap doesn’t either. He literally said even butter chicken doesn’t come with rice and said he would give us complimentary rice as if he was doing us a favor. We said we just wanted our original order.

He took it back and we had to wait a long time for the food. When the food finally came, his tone had changed and wasn’t friendly at all. We liked the food, it was a little too spicy, but no one came by to offer us water or check on us. We finished our food, paid and left....