Chawlas2 Seattle — Restaurant in Seattle

TLDR: small proportion sizes, homey tastes.

I ordered delivery. All items arrived neatly packed.

Braised Pork with Rice: not as flavorful as I thought, which is a good thing--more of a home cooked meal taste rather than a Panda Express taste that will overwhelm your tastebuds. I was definitely not reaching for rice every bite to neutralize the flavors. The pork was cut into tiny cubes and had decent flavor but the size and proportion of the chunks were not very satisfying--I would have preferred hunks of meat. It's called Braised Pork with Rice but it feels like the rice was the main dish and everything else was the side. The veggies it came with were freshly prepared and had a blanched texture--lightly crunchy--as opposed to other places that cook your veggies into oblivion, leaving you with the mushy corpse. Don't laugh, you know what I mean! For example, cooked carrots should not be the texture of mashed potatoes (at least in my opinion). I'm a fan of blanched texture veggies, especially greens! I was a bit disappointed to find that the egg was a fried egg rather than the typical hard boiled tea egg that comes with a dish like this.

Popcorn Chicken: overall nice pepper/salt flavor. The texture is most definitely better when dining in rather than getting ToGo--it was a little soggy and not very crunchy upon arrival. The chicken was a bit on the dry side and not "juicy" but still good.

Passion Fruit Slushie: BOY is this sweet. It was too sweet for my liking. I wish there was an option to adjust sweetness. It almost felt like drinking straight up cold syrup--rather than being a tastebud neutralizer for the food, I was reaching for the food to neutralize the sweetness! The flavor is great but it just too sweet for me.

Matcha Cookies: semi-soft and dense, almost bread like. I like the texture and the flavor. It's not overwhelming sweet and has a nice matcha kick. The cranberry bits add a nice refreshing tang.

The dough for the following buns was a bit on the dry and dense side and not as fluffy as you would expect. I found myself leaving the last few bites of dough without filling left.

Red Bean Mochi Bun: I love the Mochi ball addition to the red bean. It's sweet but not too sweet, a good balance that's not cavity inducing.

Taro Bun: a bit on the dry side but had a good flavor in terms of taro--it's the real stuff!

Pork with Salted Egg Yolk Bun: my favorite of all the buns. Good seasoning and flavor--you can taste the green onion. The salted egg yolk is a nice touch and isn't too overpowering--it won't leave you reaching for...

I stopped by for some paneer tikka masala, raita and naan. The people are very kind, but the tikka masala was extremely weird. I’ve never had one that is watery (as seen in the picture towards the right, yes that’s pure watery liquid) and green peppers! Never once in my life have I had tikka masala with large chunks of green pepper, and the real funny thing is there was a total of two chunks, which makes me wonder if they fell in from another order.

There was also no creamy element to it. Of the hundreds of Indian restaurants I’ve ate over the decades, the tikka masala always had a cream element. Theirs feels like they missed that step, it both tasted and looked like just puréed tomatoes and spices. When I first opened the container, it literally looked like a Mexican salsa. I’m glad I had the raita to help with that.

It also had many full cloves mixed in, which were not a fun surprise to bite into.

The price for it all was pretty ridiculous too, everything plus a tip came to over 40 dollars — just for one person. I should’ve just ordered from a different Indian place on UberEats for the same amount of money.

Also, to top it all of, the portion sizes are just kind of skimpy.

Unfortunately, considering all of this, I won’t be returning or recommending it to anyone.

Edit: read the owner's response. Honestly, I've worked in kitchens off and on for 20 years now. I know the difference between a fat and a liquid. It definitely was not butter, it was the water from the tomatoes. They have two distinctive tastes and textures, and I am 100% sure it was not butter. Either way, kind of a lame response especially since they also didn't address the green peppers and whole cloves that were left in the sauce as well. Whatever, there's much better quality Indian restaurants in this city that'll I'll be...

I was really disappointed after spending $40+ on one dish and some samosas. I ordered through door dash and the delivery was pretty quick for a Saturday night, and it took the driver about 12 minutes to get from there to my house. However, problem #1, the rice and samosa were really cold. Not just from the drive, but cold like they were sitting in a refrigerator. The second issue was the butter chicken and that had two issues on its own. First, it has a god awful gray/brown color that no human would find appetizing. It also tasted so sweet like there was spoonfuls of sugar and a bunch of blended up mango or something. I called the restaurant thinking I was given the incorrect dish and they said no, that’s what their butter chicken looks and tastes like. I asked why the picture on door dash was a vibrant red and looks like the butter chicken I’ve been eating for the past 20 years and he said, “that’s the picture of the butter chicken from our other franchise in New York.” They are misrepresenting their food on the delivery app which is not cool especially when you pay so much $$ for it. The garlic naan could have been really good but it was underdone on the outsides and it was sticky and doughy. The rice was just white rice with a hint of flavor, not like what I’ve seen at all other Indian restaurants. They’re getting two stars because the flavor of the samosa (after microwaving it) was really good, probably the best veggie samosa I’ve had. It’s safe to say I’ll probably never stray again from my favorite Indian place in northgate (and probably their biggest...