Masala Indian Cuisine — Restaurant in Lexington

Years ago, when it was released, I watched the Pixar movie, Ratatouille when it was released. The scene, where the critic is taken back to his childhood with one bite, I always tried to aspire to create this with the food I made, making food from my childhood and early years, for my family. You see, I am a Chicano from Austin Texas who was a share cropper growing up. So we weren't exactly middle class, but we did eat well, eating off of the land from the crops we grew. But a few days ago, I took my wife and son to eat here off of the recommendation from a friend. Our daughter was as at a sleepover so we wanted to do something special for our son. It was me though, who would be 'touched' by the food. I ordered the lamb vindaloo at a medium spicy level as I was recovering from a health procedure. Taking the normal naan, I took a bite of the vindaloo sauce with a bit of potato and instantly I was speechless, taken back to the late 1970s, eating on a bench with my cousins as my great aunt cooked for us, us eating carne guisada, papas fritas and beans with homemade flour tortillas. The flavor of the potato along with the vindaloo sauce was what took me back to my childhood. And I began to cry silently as I relived this memory. My wife and later the waiter asked what was the issue. It took me some time to explain what was going on as I was literally speechless for some time. Their food and service is great, what you want from any restaurant. But something special happened to me that day. And I'm going...

After reading many reviews, we had high hopes for a little something different for our date night. Because there were so many positive reviews, I dismissed the negatives as a fluke or an off day.

Looks like we caught them on one of those as well. I ordered masala chai (quintessential Indian tea), but when the server came back with my husband's drink, he alerted me they didn't have chai today. So I got a duplicate of my husband's drink, the mango yogurt smoothie—which, while tasty, was exceedingly sweeter than I expected (sweeter than most desserts). We wanted to order lamb samosas (an appetizer), and were informed they were out of those too. As we browsed the other appetizers to see what else we might like, the server said, "Actually we don't have appetizers tonight. Or naan, we're out of naan too." (Out of your signature bread?) "Okay... We'll need a minute." So I looked at the soups, and I chose two options (in case they were out of my first pick), as well as two entrees. But alas, they did not have any soups either. At this point, there was no way we were going to experience the Indian meal we were hoping for, so we made the decision to go elsewhere. We paid for our drinks, tipped the server (it's not their fault), and went to another restaurant. Super disappointed, because I was craving what I expected to be a delicious and authentic representation of Indian cuisine. There are a couple of other places in Lexington to try, so I'm hoping we find a better...

Really tired of how cheap this place is in everything but the prices they charge. Used to order a lot of takeout from here but they've price gouged so much since covid their prices are now just unreasonable. And last several orders they've consistently cheaped out in different ways. Straw that broke the camel's back for me was in my last order, an order of 4 dishes, they for whatever absurd reason insisted on stuffing everything into one single medium sized paper bag. My order would not have fit in said paper bag. Instead of using 2 bags or a bigger bag...they squeezed everything they could inside that bag and left out anything they couldn't fit. For that reason, my order was missing a rice that was supposed to be included with one of the meals, so one of my family members was left with spicy chicken with no rice to cool their tongue off and balance the meal. Also, one of the masala dishes exploded because everything was squeezed in so tight, which left a stain on our doormat we've now had to replace (from the delivery being placed there), and one of my family members only had half a dish we paid full [over]price for. It's crazy to me how they can raise their prices so much and yet do things like this. I mean, you couldn't afford a $0.0001 paper bag?? They've done a lot of other cheap stuff too, but that would make this a much longer review than it already is. I'm done with this place....