Aditi Indian Cuisine — Restaurant in San Francisco

Aditi is a new casual Indian restaurant inside the old Just had a late night meal Garcon French restaurant,which closed in 2019. They offer a range of delicious northern and southern Indian fare at reasonable prices.

My first impression was meh - they interior was uninspiring and atmosphere generally lacking. In fact, it looks more like a French restaurant, they clearly haven't redecorated - some of the wine prints are still on the wall! Our table wobbled, the paint was peeling, and lighting was uneven. Even the menus were lackluster - looks like someone printed out a list of Indian food with an inkjet printer on standard letter paper. So not a place I'd recommend for a date or anything fancy.

But the food was delicious and earned back it's stars! We had four dishes and all were fantastic: Samosa (Spinach and Cheese) - $6 Gobi Manchurian (Fried cauliflower with spices) - $11 Veg Jalfrezi (Vegetable curry with indian spices) - $12 Chicken Tikka Masala (the classic) - $15

Note the curries both came with ample rice included in the price. The Chicken Tikka was deliciously spiced and much better than average, as was the jalfrezi. We ate up all the cauliflower right away - lightly battered and fried with spices, unions, and peppers - amazing. The samosas were also delicious and not as deeply fried as usual, which I preferred, and it came with 4 of them.

The server was very honest about the dishes and helped us choose well. In fact, when we tried to order a Dosa, he suggested it might be too much food, and when we ordered a second chicken dish, he guided us to try something else to have more variety. At first it felt pushy, but we ended up with such a great assortment, I'm glad he pushed us.

I think this would be a great spot for vegetarians - not only did they have a very wide selection of vegetarian dishes, the menu very clearly separated veg and non-veg dishes, so very easy to order. I'm a meat lover, but we even ordered three vegetarian dishes and loved them all!

One of my favorite things about Aditi - it's open very late, until midnight most nights and 1am Friday and Saturday. Perfect for a night owl like myself. We were able to get seated last night at 11:15pm and order a full meal...

My friend and I arrived before the dinner rush, which was a good move, because on a Friday night, the place quickly became packed. I always like to be surprised and this place did not disappoint! The menu is full of choices for both vegetarians and carnivores, alike. We shared the 'Chicken 555' for a starter. I would recommend ordering a side of rice to go with this. It was several small chunks of chicken breast marinated in ginger, garlic South Indian style sauce sprinkled with cashnut. The garlic naan was some of the best I've ever had. My friend wasn't as fond as the veggie samosas as I was (spinach and cheese), which just meant more for me. This is the one area that lost me, though. For the samosas, we were served two dipping sauces, one being a cilantro chutney and the other was ketchup. Yes. KETCHUP. This was supposed to be a tamarind sauce. Perhaps they were out of tamarind sauce or it was a mistake from the kitchen. OUCH. One of our favorites was not on the menu. We love vindaloo, but only lamb vindaloo was on the menu. We asked if they could make chicken vindaloo for us and they did. This dish was amazing and had too many flavors exploding in my palate to count. Sometimes, vindaloo will have a tomato-cream texture sauce. This one was just a cream sauce, laden with coriander and many other spices served with butter rice. It was an unexpected surprise of flavor and is easily the best vindaloo sauce I've ever had. The owner was out and about meeting the guests and answering questions about the cuisine, etc. Also, we noticed nearly every table in the place had an Indian guest with the party ... always a good sign for good home cooking and authenticity. We can't...

Had the Gobi Manchurian, Paneer 65 & Neelakiri Kofta w/garlic naan. The Paneer was awesome, very authentic. The Gobi was good, but on the spicy side even though we ordered everything mild. We told the waiter that this was OK for the appetizers but to make sure the main dish (kofta) was mild. He said he'd make sure, but it came out spicy. He asked us how it was, and when we said its on the spicy side, we were told "that can't be possible", and it was implied that I couldn't tell what I was tasting, which felt really odd. I know what spicy is and what mild is, and eat at Indian restaurants very frequently. I would have much rather been told "Sorry, we only make that dish spicy, its not possible to make it mild here" then to be weirdly told I didn't know what I was tasting...