Tandoor Char House — Restaurant in Lake View Township

This a long one so please read on.

I'll start with the good The service was great The portion sizes are large The cook on the steak was accurate All in all The food was okay at best. (5/10)

On to the bad Honestly the steak at char house was the tastiest thing on the table. But that isn't saying a lot. The meat of the ribeye was choice grade at best but they did get the cook correct so plus points there. I do see now why there aren't prices on the menu that the qr code takes you to because it really isn't worth it. There was a lack of seasoning which makes me think that the kitchen was afraid of using any. Almost all the food we had was nowhere near how it was described on the menu. This is one of those places that has the same base for all their curries.

The food We started off the experience with stale Papadum which is an Indian crisp and a side of chutneys which tasted watered down. The chutneys lacked any prominent flavors and they tasted the same if you ate them with your eyes closed, the only thing that set them apart was their color. The achar was definitely not made in house but store bought it actually tasted mass produced.

TLDR- the amount of food you get is good but the quality is trash. If you're looking for flavorful food give this place a hard pass. Especially given how expensive it is. It seems like they are afraid of using spices and seasoning.

The apps The wings (7/10) - full wings. only 3 pieces tho (technically 6, 3-flats 3-drums) small but the sauce was good but definitely not worth $9.

The ceviche (2/10)- it lacked flavor and it really should not be served on a crisp. All the moisture was absorbed by the crisp and what was left was a very dry pile of shrimp and fish. There was no seasoning at all.

The seasoned masala fries. - (8/10) seasoned fries which is the most seasoning we experienced the entire night.

On to the entree's The Ribeye steak (7/10)- the steaks lacked seasoning. We needed to ask for salt and pepper. The saving grace was that they cooked it to the correct temp, And how much it was.

The assorted grill (3/10) The meat was dry and hard to chew and actually tasted like cheap cuts on the discount rack at a supermarket. Something a desperate broke college student would buy.

The penne tikka masala. (3/10) It was definitely not Tikka masala but closer to butter masala. On the sweeter side. The pasta was over cooked.

The Murg Malai (4/10) the cook was good but severely any lacked flavor.

The rice. (1/10) Plain almost dry rice no flavor at all.

The desserts. Ice creams (8/10) this felt like the saving grace to an otherwise underwhelming experience.

The mango lassi chase cake. (9/10) This was good it probably was the only thing that tasted like its description from the menu.

The mango lassi (2/10). Was more tart than sweet. It tasted as if all they did was mix Generic plain yoghurt and mango pulp which was stirred by a spoon the consistency was slightly chunky.

The masala chai (1/10) watered down Lipton tea with...

This was a very poor experience. I was expecting much more from this place. Whenever I walked past their take-out location on Hubbard street, the smell of Tandoor was mesmerizing. So I decided to visit the restaurant. The menu looked a good mix of classics and fusion dishes. Maybe my expectations were too high, which is why I was disappointed. We ordered - Chicken Empanada, Cajun Tandoori Chicken Boti, Tikka Masala Tacos and Chicken Biryani

Chicken Empanadas: The dough was too thick. They had fried the empanadas instead of baking them. Frying them made it oily. It didn't even look like empanadas; looked more like a railway cutlet. Crust was chewy and not crisp at all.

Cajun Tandoori Chicken Boti: When you add the word "Tandoori" in a name, you expect it to have a smoky flavor which comes from cooking the food in a tandoor (clay pot). There was no smoky flavor. The smell comes from the sizzler plate caramelizing the onions over it. The Chicken was over cooked and hard. There is a trick to cooking chicken in tandoor - cook it 85 to 90% and then take it out and let it rest for 5 minutes. Chicken will get cooked through its juices and will remain tender. I think they missed this part. Now, talking about flavor, they was none. It was just red color charred salty chicken

Tikka Masala Tacos: This was decent, but might have been better. It was tortilla with chicken tikka masala as the filling. Maybe try using a mint cream sauce to elevate the taste. Also, tortillas were slightly bitter. They needed to be roasted more to remove the bitterness out of them. I am not sure if the tortillas were made in-house or store bought. But, if made in-house, its all in the dough.

Chicken Biryani - This was a major disappointment. Biryani was dry. Rice had no flavor or shine. Add spices like cardamom, cloves, star anise, bayleaf and black pepper corns along with salt and ghee while cooking rice. That is how a biryani rice is cooked. Also cook rice only 75-80%. Rest gets cooked during the Dum process. What I had was a dry chicken pulao, and a very poor representation at that. The chicken was decent, nothing special to boast about. Biryani also came without raita and curry on the side.

Service was good, and servers were attentive. The set up is neat and cozy. But, at the end, your food is what its all about. I understand running a restaurants is tough job. Still, there are no short cuts to cooking. As I said, maybe I expected more, so was...

Our experience was so bad here that at one point, we wanted to warn other couples we saw coming in to leave.

My partner and I did the pre-paid tasting menu for Valentine’s Day so we were stuck here for dinner. A few notes and suggestions below:

A tasting menu can’t be ambitious if you don’t have the ability able to deliver on it. We were seated at 8 PM and did not receive our first course (which was really the second course because we never even got the first course but didn’t bother complaining because we knew it would take another 20 minutes to arrive) until after 8:30. We didn’t receive our mango lassis until after 9 when we had to ask the hostess to bring them. Some courses were just way too big - a tasting menu should not have so much food leftover that everyone is taking home leftovers (though I appreciate them). The second and third courses were good but the curries in the fourth lacked salt. A very obvious focus on quantity over quality was shown here.

My partner and I both have significant experience in the restaurant industry and could tell that restaurant management here was severely lacking. Our initial waiter was unapologetic and had an attitude when we brought up that we had been sitting for 30 minutes without even being acknowledged. The restaurant should’ve been set up in a way where everyone who was doing the extensive tasting menu could be reached and served easier. If you realized you were understaffed but overbooked, you should have a plan to be apologetic to those who pre-paid over $100/table and at least get pre-made appetizers and drinks out to tables within the first 20 minutes in a staggered delivery. Serving people food and drinks should’ve been the priority for all staff (which should’ve included management) in the restaurant rather than resetting or polishing empty tables in front of hungry people.

Going forward, I hope this restaurant plans appropriately for what is obviously one of the biggest restaurant nights of the year in Chicago. The food was overall delicious but the experience was so bad that we agreed we would’ve actually preferred less food in exchange for better, faster service. We did not get home until almost 11 after spending almost 3 hours being...