Jewel In The Crown — Restaurant in Newburyport

As an early birthday treat my daughters took me out for Indian food last night. We went to Jewel In The Crown in Newburyport and I must say it was some of the best Indian food I’ve ever eaten in my life! Everything was so fresh, well seasoned and perfectly cooked. They have hands down the best chicken kabob I’ve ever tasted. Very flavorful, tender and not the least bit dry.

I’ll list everything we ate below;

-Muligatawny- rich flavorful broth, lots of spices throughout, perfect amount of salt. Excellent

-Crown Mixed Appetizers: Vegetable pakora, vegetable samosa, aloo tikki, cheese pakora, chicken pakora, meat samosa chicken kabob and fish pakora-everything was hot, crispy and well seasoned. I especially liked the samosa dough.. it was light and flakey

chicken bhuna: Boneless chicken pan roasted with  onions, tomatoes, peppers with spices: chicken was perfectly cooked, nice amount of spice and heat (I got medium level) vegetables cooked crisp tender. Yum all around! Lamb korma: Lamb curry cooked in creamy sauce enriched with cashews and raisins. This might have been my favorite dish of the night (tough to pick tho!) the lamb was tender and the sauce was amazing! I’ve had korma from many other Indian restaurants but this is the best one I’ve ever tasted by far. I could have eaten just the sauce itself by the spoonful! So flavorful, little bit of heat (medium level again).. perfection. Coconut basil shrimp: this was on the specials menu, it’s shrimp cooked in a Coconut basil sauce. This was my daughters’ favorite dish of the night! We were told by a staff member that it’s actually one of their most popular dishes lately. I can certainly see why! Delicious sauce.. rich, creamy with a wonderful depth of flavor from all the spices used.. good amount of huge shrimp too. They don’t skimp here on portions or quality that’s for sure!

We also got garlic naan and onion naan with our meals. It was good.. not great tho. I liked it, but for me it was a touch dry and could have used a bit of salt. But in general still very tasty!

The staff was very friendly and attentive. The restaurant was clean and well kept and is in a gorgeous old brick building. The prices were extremely reasonable too. We got a big appetizer, 3 meals and 2 full orders of naan and the total (including tax) only came to 88 dollars!

All in all a great meal/experience. If you want some really delicious Indian food, then I highly recommend giving this...

We went to Jewel in The Crown before a night out in Newburyport for our anniversary. We love Indian food and this has been one of the best in Massachusetts. We started out with a mango lassi and the meat samosa. The mango lassi was great, it's a timeless classic. The meat samosa had peas and ground lamb in it, the pastry was light, and the fillings were packed in, it went great with their mint sauce which has a hint of spice to it. For the main courses we had the keema curry, and the special biryani with garlic and basil naan. The keema curry has so much meat, there was undoubtedly enough for 3 people. I ordered it spicy, it was not spicy enough to make you sweat, but enough for you to know it was spicy. There was a good amount of peas, I love this dish and here it was a great value. The portion of rice they gave with it matched the portion of the keema. This also paired really well with the naan, the keema does not have a diverse group of spices it's fairly simple, so the addition of the basil and garlic really worked well with the dish. The naan was also one of the best cooked naan I've had, it was fluffy on the inside and crunchy on the outside, not too greasy, and it really reheats well just throw it in a pan and cook both sides for like a minute or two. The special biryani had shrimp lamb and chicken. Again I have to mention the portion size, it was like three meals. The flavors were great, though pretty standard, but the raita was really nice to cool the heat of it. We finished off the meal with a pistachio kulfi, it's not that creamy, more grainy, but it's got a nice pistachio flavor, and it was a perfect portion for the end of the meal. Our server was very helpful with recommendations and the owner was social asking about where we are from and telling us about his background. Also the decor is very nice a lot of nice pictures of Indian scenes. The meal costed a little more than 80 dollars, which for what we got was a great value. All in all I definitely would recommend this place...

I would give them 1 out of 5 stars based on my experience this one time but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they are not usually this bad. Me and a group of 4 others went to get some dinner at the jewel after a music festival in Newburyport let out (August 30th). Eventually we were given a table in a very odd nook of the restaurant that was really too small to fit 5 people. It was then probably at least 20 or 30 mins later that I had to go and track someone down because nobody had come to us once at that point to get drinks or anything. At that point we put in our orders of 5 dinner entrees and 2 appetizers. The rest of the dinner went out of control down hill from that point that we spent most of the night laughing and making fun of the service. It constantly seemed like we had been forgotten about and that nobody was actually assigned to our table, and it took our food an incredibly long time to come out, and when it did, some people got there food while the rest of the people had to wait another 20 mins or more. Some of the food that came out was really good but at that point we couldn't tell if we were just so hungry that anything would taste good. Some people had ordered lamb tandoori that was very over cooked, and one person's meal was probably finished early and left to sit out and was getting cold by the time it got to him. There was one gentleman who we believe was the bartender that came by at several times during the night to try and look after our table that should probably be put in charge of management because he seemed to be the only one who could calmly keep track of customers. The most discouraging part of all this was that even with the festival ending there really weren't so many people in the restaurant that it should've caused this much...