mint leaf indian bistro — Restaurant in Salem

Run don't walk to this amazing spot if you want to experience Zen. Great friendly service and delicious food. An explosion of carefully layered spices in delicious sauces. ☘️ 🌈 🦄 Update: I came back.. Stopped in to grab a Doordash delivery and it smelled sooooooo incredibly good I mentioned that to Navi at the counter, he thanked me and said I was "welcome to come back!" I had the strongest craving and would not stop talking about it in the car with my girlfriend, as we drove with a guest order all the way out to Corbin College, so we decided to take his advice drove back for lunch. We didn't realize until we went to order that we had arrived 5 mins to close, oh noooo we were those people we thought gahhhh 🤯, they close between 2 and 4pm heads up, so being lifetime food service workers ourselves we said we would come back and apologized for our mistake. Navi told us we were absolutely still welcome to order take out and after talking to the chef in the kitchen said we could actually dine in as they had another table still to order. How incredibly accommodating and rare! We did decide to sit and were given a complimentary water but on seeing we had a delivery at home decided when we ordered we should just order take out and get back to work afterwards. Absolutely ravinous by the time we got home our stomachs grumbling from the beautiful smell we dug in quickly. I was in heaven! Everything was packaged beautifully with care, Navi even asked me if we wanted Naan bread, which I had forgotten to order, I instinctively agreed as it works so well as a shovel which is what we did making the food on our plates disappear like magicians. 🪄 The delicious mint & tamarind chutney / sauces complimented everything. We had the Vegetable Samosa, best in town by far, Paneer Pakora, I've literally never had cottage cheese I liked till now, perfectly spiced and delicious, Paneer Tikka Masala, just the right amount of spices and my girlfriend had Lamb Biryani which comes with a delicious tender spiced lamb and rice with Raita yogurt to balance the heat. We are going to share the beautiful Kheer for dessert later after our food nap, my girlfriend is already napping as I write this 😂 😴. Thank you Navi and Chef for making our food dreams come true on this rainy day today. You are truly the BEST most accommodating and friendly restaurant in all of Salem! SLÁINTE...

So I was the biggest fan for 2 weeks and 5 days. I really believed in this place, but after the curry that I received the other day spending nearly a $100, I was so upset that I went back to talk to the owners to find out one of them has already walked.

My family and I had eaten 2 dozen bowls of Curry and were establishing the ones we really liked. The chicken curry was one of our favorites and it was always served with the Tandoori Style Chicken cut up in the curry making it an exceptional dish. On our visit two nights ago it was far from that. The chicken was extremely thin sliced chicken that you would see in a Chinese stir fry and it had Gristle and Bone fragments attached. The shrimp Curry which again is one of our favorites was a 30% pool of oil.

Now here's the worst part of it all. They're not doing sit-down anymore and forcing you to do takeout so that's what I did. When you dine in the bowl is approximately 20 oz of Curry and they drizzle a topping over it. However on their take out they're cramming the curry into a 16 oz to go container and only giving you 12 oz per Curry of rice. So not only is the product not as good, but you're totally getting ripped off on takeout.

Last, but not least there was the top of a bottle that was the seal in our Curry. I washed it off and was going to show the other owner, but I decided not to even bother. Stay away from this place. Its going down very soon. I included three pictures so you can see what was ultimately in my Curry, but also the tiny 16 oz container they're cramming a $19 curry dish...

UPDATE 02/17/24: Went back here after several months to try again. Service, food, everything was the same or better. This is the defacto Indian restaurant in the Salem area. If you like Indian and haven't gone here? Go here. And get the Chicken Korma - it's criminal! 👏👏👏 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Significant other had heard of this place recently opening through pictures posted on social media .. so naturally as lovers of Indian food, decided to make it downtown in Salem to try! We were not disappointed.

The location is in High Street in the old Love Love Teriyaki building, and virtually has the same layout but updated to match the theme. We ordered the Paneer Pakora, Vegetable Korma, Butter Chicken with a Mango and Strawberry Lassi.

First off - if you've read my reviews and seen how I've talked about Masala Bites down in Dallas? Mint Leaf is what Salem needed to compare to Masala. Food was delivered in the appropriate order (small plate then entrees) and was fully served in under 15 minutes.

Presentation was exceptional, freshness of food was exceptional, and god damn if that Butter Chicken is the most amazing dish I've had from any Indian Restaurant ever. Legitimately blew me away!

All in all, this was an extremely enjoyable experience, we will 100% come again and frequent Mint Leaf as the defacto Indian Restaurant in Salem/Keizer.

If you like Indian - you need to try them ASAP. I promise you won't be...