India House — Restaurant in Northampton

for any one restaurant, one can never review the entire menu unless one has unlimited income. 🙂 and if you had kind of a bad experience the first visit, and aren't inclined to go back, then once review might be quite unfair and not include some very good dishes.

so I'll just give a bit of an account of our experience which wasn't great but wasn't horrible.

we entered and went through the outside sitting area which was enclosed with clear plastic and an awning. we asked to sit in the very beautiful ornate living room which was quite empty. The host said oh I'm sorry, we are not seating many people there because somebody got sick here. it was actually my daughter who got a severe migraine. she said we could look but not sit down.

that was quite bizarre, and not just disappointing but kind of rude. so are we going to catch a migraine from sitting in the dining room? why couldn't we sit there?

we both got the idea that they simply didn't want to have to have waiters go to more than one room and clean another room. it would just be easier if we all sat outside.

which we did. it was a cool cloudy day. not the greatest. not the worst.

My wife ordered a Naan-pizza, I got the chicken korma mild. she said her pizza was pretty good. it certainly had a crispy crust. I thought the cheese was super gloppy. but you wouldn't expect a pizza to be good in an Indian restaurant anyway.

My chicken korma was way way rich. it was pretty bland but I was being cautious and ordered mild before I knew what their spice level was. but it wasn't a matter of heat, it was just bland and not very complex. it had no raisins as advertised. perfectly edible but not what I've had with chicken korma before. I will say the dish was slightly bigger than most Indian restaurants.

but overall the food was pretty pricey. it seems like Indian and Japanese restaurants are often more expensive than other Asian restaurants. I'm not sure why. but the chicken korma was definitely not worth $23 and the pizza was not worth its price either. And $23 for an entree here is pretty cheap. most of the dishes were 25 to $30.

My son got something like chicken nuggets which were covered in chickpea flour and fried. he actually liked it quite a bit, although I didn't think it was all that great.

overall the food was mediocre, the prices seemed expensive for all the dishes. and the thing with not being able to sit in the dining room rankled even more when a party walked in and got to sit in the dining room.  maybe they had reservations? it made no sense because if they sat there there was no infection risk.

so again, we only had one dish apiece, we looked around and got a sense for the place, but I really can't talk about the other dishes there. it was disappointing enough that we will not be back. but perhaps you will find something...

There was not one redeeming factor about my visit at India House. The food quality was poor, the wait staff was weird, and the price was outrageous. I’ve been to 3 other Indian restaurants (which does NOT make me an expert by any means, however) and India House was not similar to any of them; the other 3 were similar in quality and spice.

We ordered chicken tikka masala and a vegetable masala and felt like we were eating a thick cream sauce with tobasco poured in it. There was hardly a hint of any other spice. The “garlic” naan was about the size of my female open faced hand. I took 3 bites of my food and could no longer tolerate it. Didn’t even take it to go. And the waitstaff, or at least the woman who took my order, did not return to ask how the food was. If she had, I would have politely told her it was HORRIBLE.

The portions were far smaller than any other Indian restaurant I’ve been to AND way over priced.

The persons collecting the finished dishes, (I’d call them waitstaff-but they didn’t talk whatsoever), collected the plates before the other members of our table had finished their food. (Meaning, they took their plates and put them one on top of the other, rendering it impossible to put back down on the table once we informed them they weren’t done.)

Save your tastebuds and money and go to India Palace. They are MUCH more tasteful in service, food, and price.

Upon thought-the Pakoras were actually tasty-still over priced for the amount we got. There’s...

Food: We ordered the so called infamous paneer & onion naanizza along with paneer pomegranate and garlic naan. I did not understand any hype that has been created for the naanizza. Secondly, the paneer pomegranate curry was extremely spicy and it felt like after preparing the curry they added dry chilli powder because we could literally feel the texture of dry chilli powder. I am Indian and can handle high spice levels, and it wouldn’t be exaggerating if I say that I had tears rolling down my eyes while eating that curry even after mixing it with rice (comes free with curry) and garlic naan. Texture and spice both were disgusting. Garlic naan on the other hand was quite good but the portion size of everything was a little less.

Service: As soon as we entered, we were ignorantly greeted by the owner. She forced us indirectly to place an order as soon as possible and took our order. In the entire process, she made us feel dumb even when we are Indians and we know what to order. Her behavior was arrogant and had unhealthy pride, so much so that when we asked for lemon to neutralize the spice levels, she blamed it on us for ordering medium spicy food.

Overall, I’d suggest to walk in, see the furniture and beautiful Indian carving, and leave before you have an eye contact...