Shan Restaurant — Restaurant in San Jose

This restaurant is a big tough to judge. There a few things they do very right and a few things they seriously need to improve on. Depending on what is your priority is and what you ate, you could rate it very high or very low. I am trying to be fair here and see from all angles. So firstly if you are going for price, this place does provide value for money. It is cheaper compared to other restaurants. Depending on what you order but a family of 3 could eat within 25 dollars or less full stomach. I can appreciate how they made their prices competitive and they do server all their food fresh and hot. The quantity is good. They offer free chai and onion/chili salad. I have eaten the following dishes in the restaurant chicken biryani, goat karahi, butter chicken, chicken tikka masala, chicken sheek, beef sheek, chicken leg tandoor, all the breads, chana masala, archari chicken, nihari and archari paneer. All the gravy dishes are very average in flavor as per desi standards. Some of dishes the ingredients are authentic in terms of it was put together but the final product is average. So they have the right elements in place, only if they stuck to authentic recipe and cooking methods, it could take the dish to a new level. So the potential to do better is definitely there in terms of the dish quality. The nihari if I would rate it out of 10 would give it a 2 or 3. It is not nihari, you cannot just add some flower to a gravy , make it thick and call it nihari. There is much more to nihari than thick gravy. Please go on youtube and search nihari masala, make it in house and put it together. Nihari is a simple dish to make, it just requires time. The best dish in my opinion is the sheek kebabs. They give a right balance of spices so you can taste the meat and not just spices. A lot restaurants put so much spice in kebab that you cannot even taste the meat. The gravy dish my favorite would be the chicken jalfrezi. The biryani is similar to a karachi sindhi style biryani but it has too much mint. The mint over powers the flavor. You don't get any aromatic flavors no ghee, fresh brown onions fried, no saffron, no rose water, no cardamon smell, nothing. Just masala and mint. Tone down the mint and add more aromatics. I have eaten brain masala, it has too much of a bitter flavor, they put to much methi and all sorts of spices to the point you don't know what your eating. Please get a new brain masala recipe that is a bit more subtle. Keep it simple but good flavor. I wish they would use better quality meat more softer. The animal they purchase must be very large size, probably non organic. Which is not their fault. A lot of the animal north america is pumped with hormones, antibiotics which impacts flavor of the meat. If possible I would appreciate if restaurant order better quality goat also, that is not so hard and have gamey smell. They need to perhaps marinate the meat nicely to tenderize it before cooking it. This is an issue I seen across all restaurants in north america. Sometimes the restaurants want to give you large quantity so they use large size animals but that then compromises on the flavor of the meat. This is what I think happening here in this place too. Overall if you want a quick indian food at like 9 or 10 pm at night with good kebabs, average biryani and average curry for a very good price, this would be a good choice in the San Jose area. This place has good potential...

Rarely do I give poor reviews.

But I am really upset by this branch of Shan Restaurant. The branch at El Camino is way better than this. We had dinner yesterday so we came to this Shan branch, since it was closer to our location.

But the manager (a Punjab guy) at the counter was least interested in the business. He was always on his phone and he couldn't listen to us as we were calling him. He had his earphone buds in his ears!!

The meat was very tough and raw. My friend couldn't chew and he threw out. Also the chicken leg tandoori was dry, the chicken sheekh and mutton sheekh was not up to the mark. We were totally unhappy, since a day before we had amazing dinner at the El Camino branch.

When we called the manager and informed him about this issue, we were very polite and were not expecting any refund or replacement his response was "Neither do I handle the kitchen, nor did I apply the masala on the meat, so how can I answer regarding your complaint" I said but I did the transaction with you, I gave the order and paid you. He said yeah, I will inform the owner I am just a manager. His whole attitude was too bad and careless. He was least bothered about what we were trying to tell. He just walked away.

There onions were not kept as they are usually kept. The kitchen guy who used the toilet ahead of me had no courtesy to flush or keep the toilet clean for the next person. So imagine how well they may be maintaining the kitchen hygiene.

Very poor handling of customers.

Very disappointed

AVOID THIS BRANCH!!!!

11 Sep...

Another one of a passable Indian restaurant. I have been here a few times but had decided not to leave a review since I couldn't decide what grade to give to the restaurant: it always had a few good things and a few bad aspects. This time around I had the same experience so I decided to leave a review with three stars.

The restaurant has plenty of seating but they don't wait on you. You order the food at the counter and they bring the food to you. The service is average. The staff is polite and serve you if you ask for anything. However they do not go out of their way to ensure you have the best experience.

The few dishes that I have had here all taste pretty much the same. This might be because the food is spicy enough to overcome any subtle flavors. All gravy dishes are uniformly greasy. The tandoor items seem to have much more reasonable amount of fat. The breads are also decent-- soft and moist.

All in all, I will continue visiting this restaurant for lunch...