India Palace — Restaurant in Salem

I have eaten in 3 of the 4 primary Indian food restaurants now. I was excited but a little leery about trying this place out because no one ever seems to be eating there. I’m told they do a really good Grubhub or Doordash business. But some of the staff pass by me on a regular basis and are so kind and inviting that I came in today. The place is very clean and so were the restrooms. First, they now offer a lunch menu like another one close by. We could select items from either the night-time menu or from the 2 lunch menus: Non vegetarian and vegetarian. We chose non vegetarian lunch. Also their price was about the same as the competition. Here though, this menu has a choice of 2 meat dishes on the non veg menu whereas the competitor offers only 1 meat dish and it is preset by the day with no choices. Here we could choose from 4 meat menu items off the night-time menu. That means the value of this lunch menu is superb. It includes an additional meat dish, naan (garlic or plain) chai tea, along with the vegetable pakora, daal, rice, and choice of salad or raita along with roti and tamarind sauce and green chutney-both of which were excellent. So there were many items included in the price that other places don’t. The food also came with additional spice blend. I had ordered the heat index at medium level. I will go higher next time, but I did put the lovely hotter spice paste on everything. I had the lamb curry and the chicken Tika Masala as my two. I sampled my chums butter chicken. There was sufficient meat in all of the dishes. They even have a Rogen Josh lamb dish. All of the food was very well prepared and tasty. And it came quickly. I would definitely come back for the food, offerings, service, &...

This restaurant recently had a kitchen fire and went thru a remodel which was seriously needed. Many years ago this was the only Indian restaurant in Salem and it was very tasty ... but as the years went by the food quality declined and the restaurant became very run-down, dirty and hence we stopped going. Prior to the fire it was very dirty and cluttered with boxes stacked up in the windows, unclean booths, and food on the carpet. Since the remodel everything appears new and clean (I hope it stays clean!). We had vowed never to return a few years ago because we had a bad experience with getting very sick after eating there - but because of some new positive reviews, our love of Indian food, and lack of decent Indian restaurant choices in Salem (never ever go to Star of India), we decided to risk it and hit the lunch buffet for another try. The Saag Paneer was delicious; the Vegetable Korma sauce was flavorful but the veggies were a frozen mix which affected the overall flavor of the dish; the rice was bland and the tandoori chicken was a bit dry. We went right during the middle of the lunch hour and there was no wait time for seating, the food was well stocked and overall the food was pretty tasty. We would have preferred the temperature of the food to be a bit warmer (temp wise not spice wise), and perhaps they should consider adding another entree to the buffet selection for variety. All in all, if we go back for the buffet, we will view the selection prior to seating. I wish I could say that I've found a terrific Indian restaurant in Salem however there is still some room for improvement, but I do think we will give them a try for dinner which may resolve some of the...

The food is good, but our dining experience was the WORST I EVER HAD! Today is my daughter's birthday, and I surprised her by bringing her here, she loves this kind of food. The restaurant was pretty empty and very quiet, there was only 2 other couples eating there and there was 2 servers. First of all, as soon as we sat down one of the servers asked us if we were ready to order, I politely said no, we didn't even had a chance to look at the menu, we really just sat down. Well, then we ended up being completely ignored, she even kept glancing at us but never came back to take our order. 45 minutes later, the other server asked us if we were ready, of course we were. Once the server brought our Appetizers, she failed to bring the dipping sauce that the chicken pagodas was supposed to have. Then once she brought our entrees, she left out my daughter's order. She even repeated back to us what we ordered. So she had to submit my daughter's order, so we all shared part if our food with her so she wouldn't have to watch us eat. Our server didn't even take any empty dishes away, we barely had room on the table to eat. We felt completely ignored there, made us feel uncomfortable. I even had to wave for help to ask her to bring us take home containers and I had to stop her from passing us by so that we can pay for our meals so we can finally leave. I will not come back here ever! The good is good, but the dining experience leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Take out will be the only way I would ever eat...