India House — Restaurant in Saint Paul

I've eaten here multiple times, with okay experiences. That being said, the experience I had yesterday was downright embarrassing. I placed an order online roughly around 6:20PM, the system said the food would be ready in 25-30 minutes (~6:50). I arrived early as I was already in the area and when I walked in, there were upwards of 6 people waiting for take-out orders. I completely understand the dinner rush and how unforgiving customer-facing service-based jobs can be, however. Many of these people including myself actually received notifications that our food was ready for pick-up, with that not being the case. I and another customer ended up receiving our food at roughly 7:40, almost a whole hour after it was supposedly "ready" according to the ordering system.

The cherry on top was that as I was waiting, more people who had placed take-out orders starting coming in, and the gent at the front desk saying "your order will be ready soon" to them. I can understand that orders can flood in and things can be delayed, what I can't understand is the sheer lack of customer service. If you can't at the minimum manage expectations, or even just a "sorry, we're doing our best", then what the hell are you doing? If I had known how long I really would be waiting, I might've considered other options.

I did not expect a partial refund, or any extra goodies thrown into the order as does happen at other restaurants in which orders get delayed, but I did expect a better attitude from the front-of-house. 5 minutes time of an upper-employee to say to customers (who have been waiting for 40+ additional minutes) "hey I'm really sorry, thanks for being patient" can make a world of difference to a customer's experience and subsequent feelings towards an establishment. You're welcome for the lesson in customer...

Just returning from India House. It was close to Saint Paul downtown, just 10 mins ride. Me and my wife wanted to dine some Indian delicacies on Independence Day, as nothing else we had planned!

Food: Not knowing that they serve bowl of rice with every order of a curry, we ordered 2 Naan and 1 Tandoori Roti (types of breads) along with Malai Kofta dish (creamy veggie balls) - medium spicy. It was really tasty! The Mango Lassi (milkshake) was little sour but tasted well after adding sugar. We also tried Samosa (triangular puffs filled with spicy mashed potato curry), were okay.

Quantity: The curry with free bowl of plain rice and maximum one bread (Naan / Tandoori Roti / Paratha) per person should be good for two people. If not very hungry, order one bread per two persons.

Service: The food came in just 15 mins. Check was also ready when we were done.

Overall good experience with India House! Will visit it again sometime this month!

Update 07/15

Today we had Lunch Buffet there: For vegetarians, they had good curries of green peas-potato, paneer (milk tofu), spinach-potato, and yellow split peas curry. All of those were tasty! In rices, they had plain white rice and pulav (colored rice with veggies). But pulav was just plain rice cooked with turmeric. In chat (snacks) they had only samosa (puffs stuffed with mashed potatos). I was disappointed here as I was expecting Panipuri/Bhelpuri etc most loved Indian chats. Sweets were good: Kheer (rice pudding), Rasmalai (milky balls), and mango fruit salad. Overall, delicious buffet but may be less varieties compared to the best Indian restaurants in Twin Cities... But would like to mention, whatever they served were...

First off, I will say that I haven't eaten their buffet. But frankly, you shouldn't ever complain about a buffet. What do you expect when food sits under a heat lamp?

Dinner was wonderful! We started out with Onion Pakora. It was served with two delicious sauces. One was a Tamarind Sauce that, unlike nearly every time I have a tamarind sauce, wasn't too sweet. The other was ground mint, cilantro, lime juice and a little green chile and both really accented the very simple appetizer very well. For entrees I had Lamb Jalfreezl and my wife had the Fish Masala. It came with a very generous portion of Jasmine rice that was cooked very well. Jasmine rice overcooked and mushy isn't very enjoyable. We really enjoyed both dishes. The lamb was tender and not over seasoned. They used salmon for the Masala and it was only $12! Our waiter was a rather quiet guy but answered a whole lot of questions. Our food was served hot and prompt. Our water glasses were never empty.

The main thing I liked about this place in comparison to other Indian food I've had is that it wasn't over oily. You usually find your dish swimming in ghee separated from the food. Not the case here. Well balanced, not over spicy and quite enjoyable. My wife and I will...