Gokul Indian Restaurant — Restaurant in St. Louis

Hello,

I don't normally do any reviews, or I don't click any food pics. I'm not a social media kind of person.

This is my first visit at the restaurant.

Two of my friends and me, visited this restaurant for dinner, and were surprised to see that we had buffet for dinner (hardly seen it anywhere in USA). But that's fine.

The buffet had umpteen options ranging from salad items to North Indian food items to Samosas, and Gulab Jamun, and also "Pav Bhaji". (Bought a smile to my face, Pav Bhaji).

I was thinking like, this may not be a regular $10-15 buffet. So we asked for the menu cards, and were also looking for the buffet price 😂. The manager of the restaurant maybe saw us or sensed it, and told the price to us, which to our delight was very much in the $10-15 range.

This aunty (the manager) is a wonderful woman, who cares for her customers, has ethics. The restaurant is Indian, and she makes it a point to treat every customer like how any Indian welcomes someone to their home and serve them.

She made ragda-chaat for us (of 3 different types) even though it was a part of the buffet. Gave us freshly prepared naans and bread (Pav Bhaji). She also came and delivered fresh naans on our table when there weren't naans left in the buffet vessel.

That's just amazing service for me. I am out of superlatives for her, and the other people at the restaurant.

The food was good too, not just the service. More than just good I'd say.

I've been to many many restaurants in India, and a few in USA, but I can't think of many that can match the service provided here along with providing more than good quality of food.

Somewhere in a conversation with the aunty, I slipped out that it's my birthday tomorrow. So I had a little surprise for me, from her. Fee ice-cream scoops, with some chocolate sauce. We cut it like a cake😂.

I wanted to thank her for everything at the restaurant (before the surprise), so I called my parents and told them about all this, and asked them to talk to her and they too thanked her, made her feel good.

Reviews come and go, but a few humans and memories like this, should stay forever.

Aunty, if you are reading this, I thank you from all my...

I contacted this restaurant's management to plan my kid's birthday party (we had 23 adults and 7 children on the guest list). The restaurant offers a spacious (comfortable enough to seat 30 people) private room, to plan parties - they were even kind enough to allow us to put up our own wall decorations (balloons, letter-hangings etc.). The hotel manager (Preeti) was very courteous throughout the entire planning of this event and was very flexibly, both in terms of menu items to be included in the party, as well as using the private party room. She was very open and transparent and let us know beforehand what was allowed/prohibited (since this is a Kosher-certified restaurant) and that helped us plan the event better.

Pros:

• 100% satisfaction in terms of taste and quality. Their Indian chaat items are especially tasty and have an authentic touch.
• Since this is a pure vegetarian restaurant, the variety of dishes offered is enormous and will definitely be a big hit for parties where the audience is primarily vegetarian.
• Good, clean ambience

Cons: Apart from having to bring in a Kosher-certified birthday cake (which the hotel management had informed me, well in advance), planning the party was smooth sailing.

Summary: We live in O'Fallon, and though this place is a good half-hour drive from there, we were glad to find this lovely place to throw our kid's party. All our guests loved the food and named more than 1-2 items in the starters/main course/desserts category to be great-tasting. Would definitely recommend this restaurant, both for trying pure-vegetarian authentic Indian dishes, as well as planning...

We have ordered from this place before for pickup and had a pleasant experience. HOWEVER ☝🏼, we had a very different experience today when dining in. Our entry: First, the atmosphere in there was humid and hot. I noticed that there were 2 fans when I realized that the AC was broken. Then, we got served warmer than room temp water to make things even better. There was a TV blaring instrumental music the whole time. We ordered, they said it would take about 15 mins… The food: An hour later the food shows up, or should i say, a single dish out of the 4 things we ordered. It was the Samosa Chhole, the dish was good, we have no complaints. another 15 minutes later the second dish showed up, the Paneer Tikka Masala. The only thing we’re gonna say about that dish is that there were more bell peppers than paneer, they should call it pepper tikka masala instead. by this point, we cancelled our salad which didn’t arrive with the appetizer? How is it that it takes so long (over an hour!!!) for one salad?? ANYWAYS, the last dish arrived, it was the Aloo Began. Let me tell you, if you go to the store and buy you a bag of potatoes and a single eggplant and boil them, it would taste exactly the same. Keep in mind, they poured water out of this “room temp” pitcher when we went in almost 2 HOURS AGO!!! and what do we have now? no water at all, no cares given. they also never checked up on us not even once between serving the dishes. Overall, pretty bad experience. we never not tip, even at the places where the worker does not serve; but this time we had to. Save yourself your money and just make it yourself at this...