Taj India Restaurant — Restaurant in Lexington

First timer here and in a nutshell, will never go back. I must disclose, I am of Indian descent so I know what good Indian food is supposed to taste. I’ve even travelled across the pond to India and has some of the best Indian cuisines in my life, so my standards may be off putting however, I have had Indian food here in the states and somewhat lowered my standards. Now, lets get to the food. I ordered the mango lassi, veg platter for an appetizer, and the paneer do piazza. The mango lassi hit the table first and it started off as a hit. Next, the veg platter came through and it was an appetizer sampler with a samosa, spring onion and potato pakoda, fried paneer, and a fried aloo square piece. All these dishes on the sampler were good, except for the paneer and it was only breaded with a bland paneer cube with no spices or previously grilled before frying. At this point into my dinner, I was content and was looking forward to my main course, the Paneer Do Piazza, which is supposed to come with green bell peppers, onions, and paneer in a tomato cream gravy. This definitely turned my opinion on the food the other way. First of all, the gravy tasted like tomato ketchup, yuck! Even looking at the color of the gravy, you can tell it was ketchup based. Secondly, there was only one bell pepper cube in there, and I didn’t even see any onions. I only took one spoonful and was done. I didn’t even bother taking the leftovers home as no one in my household would dare to touch it. The restaurant was completely empty, btw, so you’d think the service would be fast paced but NO. We literally asked for the check and it took so long to get it, I had to go up to the waitress and ask if we had to pay up front or do we continue to wait at our table. She said she would get our checks to our table. 5 minutes more pass by and still there was no check, so I decided to take initiative and go up to the counter to pay. Tasteless food and in addition, poor and slow service. I will most certainly not go back. 2 star rating because the appetizer and drink were tasty otherwise, if those failed, it would be a 1 star to 0...

One of my favorite Indian restaurants in town. This is one of the few places in Lexington which I think has authentic Indian food. I used to come here atleast once a week and I have been coming here for a year now. The waiter (Raj) and other staffs over there already know my name and they are very friendly and accommodating. They start you with a complimentary appetizer. Spicy chilli onions with fried naan pieces. All dished come in various spice levels: Low, medium, hot, Indian hot I always go for hot and occasionally Indian hot. Other people can go for medium. Don't go for Indian hot unless you really want to . It is real spicy and it will make you cry if you are not used to spicy foods. There are various dishes that I like and here it goes in no particular order. Rice dishes: Chicken briyani, Lamb briyani Basmati rice pressure cooked with Indian spices and chiken/lamb. They add raisins to it which I normally don't like them in my rice. So I ask them to remove it. It comes with Raita (curd/yogurt) which you are supposed to eat it along with the rice.

Other curry dishes I always order it with one Chapati. It's a lighter version of Naan bread and I like this one more than the traditional one. All dishes come with a bowl of rice. They give you more rice if you ask them.

Lamb Rogan Josh: One of my favorite bright red lamb dishes. Try it atleast once.

Chicken/Lamb Korma Chicken/Lamb curry Chicken Tikka Masala Palak Chicken (Chicken in blended spinach) All of them are almost the same with some minor differences.

There are some Indian beers (TajMahal, Kingfisher) if you want to try, but I personally like the beers over here in the US and there is no reason to pay more for an imported beer.

You can go for the Thali meal which contains a little bit of everything. This is a great option if you don't actually know what you want and a good way to try different stuff before you can pick your favorite. They also have all the other Chai drinks and dessert items that you can get from any other Indian...

We've tried almost all of the Indian places in Lexington. I'd apparently forgotten what we got here before, because I can't understand how or why I'd ever order there again. It seems like they thinned their sauces with water to stretch them further, resulting in an incredibly bland inedible meal.

I cook quite a bit and have cooked many plates of Saag. Their saag was watery as if they hadn't cooked out the greens completely. Which makes me wonder, if they don't make it from scratch, how in the world was it so watery and bland? I'd always been under the impression that they aren't making things from scratch, which kind of points to thinning the food with water.

We had Malai Kofta as well and the sauce was the same way, noticeably watered down. It seemed as if they added water to the sauces or something, I've never had these dishes like that. The salt balance in the food was abysmal. The extra water in it just made it horribly bland and near inedible. Also, the vegetable balls were an interesting color that was unappetizing. They looked old or something, the inside wasn't the same color as other Kofta we'd eaten elsewhere. The flavor of them was off as well. I just felt like we were eating old food that had been watered down.

I'd highly suggest avoiding this place and simply driving to Tandoor down the road. We paid ~45 bucks for two entrees and 2 Naan breads. We ended up trying to finish our plates then chucked the rest, it is horrible food. They just aren't competitive with quality or price of other Indian places in town. There's no reason to go here over...