The Monk's Indian Bistro — Restaurant in Richmond

Not worth dining in.

There are some times you go to a place and you are amazed by the ambience, the food, the service, this was the exact opposite!!!

The food, was excessively salty, most of the dishes seemed like a soy sauce or tomato ketchup mixed in with water. The chicken was undercooked, had pieces of bone where they shouldn’t be. The momos were ok but extremely pricey, twice what you would pay anywhere else. The mango lassi was not fresh and seemed like made from canned mangoes, a week ago. :(. The soup just appeared to be soy sauce mixed with water and onion and heated in a microwave. The main dishes were all heavy on salt and ketchup.

The service was slow and underwhelming, to say the least. They were all dressed in normal clothes, didn’t appear professional or clean, and couldn’t coordinate orders. A third of our food came out in 30 minutes, and the remaining came in 4 batches after 15 min intervals. Really unimpressed. Reason given was that they had too many online orders, different chefs, whatever they could think off

The ambience was sad. There is no at, only drink they had was a mango lassi! There were only two other tables occupied, quite a few online orders and pick ups, which were getting prioritized, what we can assume is people realizing this place is not worth driving to and could just be Ubered from.

Not dining...

We were driving to the temple in Pearland so we decided to try this place on the way. It was worth the visit. It’s an Indian and indo Chinese place.

One thing that caught my eye here was their exceptional service. The staff were so friendly and helpful. Another thing you would want to keep in mind is the level of spice. Even mild spicy food is a little spicy.

Other than that the food is really really good. And the best flavor. For soups my husband had the sweet corn as it’s his favorite and he says it’s really good. I had the hot and sour. So I had the street style noodles and my husband had the wok tossed Hakka noodles. He ordered it with veggies and I had it with paneer. It was really yummy but it definitely was spicy. But I am glad the waiters mentioned it before. For dessert we had Rasmalai and gulabjamun. Very good. The best gulab jamun I had in a while and rasmalai was soft and well made.

I definitely have to say again and again about how friendly and helpful the staff are. They told us about the spice level of the dish before hand and helped us pick a dish that can be made a little mild. I would definitely recommend if you are in the area to try out this restaurant. We will definitely be back when we come...

Below average food made worse was atrocious service.

Although we were immediately seated at a table and given menus, no attention was given to us. We waited 10 minutes before a member of our group flagged down a server to ask for water. A jug of water was brought to our table, but no glasses.

We had to flag our server again to tell him we needed glasses.

We also had to ask for a server because nobody came by to ask if we were ready to order.

We ordered three items, the butter chicken, chicken manchuria, and hakka noodles with shrimp. The butter chicken came out promptly, but after 15 minutes, our other two items were still nowhere to be seen. We asked our server about it, and he said "he would check on it" i.e., he forgot to put the order in. We finally got the other two items a whole 25 minutes after the first dish came out.

The chicken manchuria was okay, but it felt like we got scammed on the hakka noodles with "shrimp." In reality, the "shrimp" was a handful of those tiny shrimp that you put in a salad.

I wouldn't order take out from here, and I would definitely never...