Aaru's Indian Restaurant — Restaurant in Tallahassee

I forgot to update. My wife gave me a gift certificate for this restaurant. When I went to use it, the person at the counter first said that they would not honor it because it was more than a year old. When I pointed out that there was no expiration date he very grudgingly accepted it, making it sound as if I was somehow cheating them and basically ruining my wife's gift to me. I complained to the owner but I think the rude dude was his brother and so he was barely apologetic. After being treated like that, I will never go back to this restaurant even though I really liked some of their food and it is within walking distance from my house.

... I could quibble about some details, but we ordered takeout for five people, 16-51 years old, and some of whom don't like curry and/or too much spicy heat, and everything was good to great and service during pickup was great too. I forgot to order something, so had to go back after someone else picked up the initial order, but it worked out well because people wanted more of a couple of items that we'd already ordered. Can't get much better than that.

This may sound odd in a review, but although their full menu was a little difficult to access straight from Google maps, I'd add another star for it if I could, as the combination of descriptions and pictures of most of the dishes was absolutely outstanding. I have not tried some restaurants in favor of others because of vague online menus, especially since covid when we have mostly been doing takeout or delivery. It was especially helpful with menu items that I was not at all familiar with, but I wish that every restaurant had a menu...

I, along with my friends, dined here and immediately felt stomach discomfort upon finishing and leaving from there. One of my friends told me next day that she feels like she had food poisoning. I called the restaurant the following day and talked to the owner. He insisted that there was no issue on their end and they cannot change anything in terms of food quality or ingredients since we might have gotten sick from some place else. Then, seeing no solution, the owner himself suggested that they can allow free food, to which I thought that at least we shouldn't have to pay for the food that made us sick and get a refund, although I initially insisted on the health issue. So, I said yes to that, and as soon as the owner heard the "yes", he started to blame me by saying that people use these techniques to get free food and I have no documentation, although the owner was the one who suggested the refund. Using "reverse psychology" to get the customer to say what they want, and then blaming it on the customer. Feeling disgusted, I said that I will take this to the right authorities rather than wasting time arguing here. Some days later, my friend also confronted the restaurant on the facebook page about this issue, to which they replied back saying that we called and asked for a refund back for our food (the owner himself suggested that, not us). And a blatant lie saying that we again called yesterday and asked for refund again (that never happened). Anyway, I had a really bad experience with all food sickness, disgusting customer service and lying by the management. Will...

So the food was good. They have a different take on the buffet offerings. They have two kinds, meat and vegetarian. They give you a platter of whatever options you choose. Obviously no sharing, when we went, the vegetarian option was $16 and the meat option was $20. There is enough food on the platter to make you full, but it's a sampler of multiple dishes, which I'm not a fan of. We had 2 egg rolls for $10. They were tasty, but that's really expensive. My wife had the noodle dish, and that was good.

Now for the bad part. Even though we ordered the egg rolls, it came with everything else, so we had to wait around 45 minutes before we ate anything. I was already hungry walking in, so I just got hungrier waiting for the food to come out.

We almost left, because the food was taking so long to come out. There were a couple of tables that had peoples come in after us, but got food before us. It wasn't just appetizers either, they had ordered the buffet platters as well.

Our first server was pretty lackluster. We had to wait about 20 minutes before he came back to take our order.

There was actually a group of peoples that left because they got tired of waiting for that server to come back and take their order.

Our second server was great. He replaced the first one once the order was placed, and waited on our table well. His service saved them a star and tips.

Unfortunately, due to how long it took for the food to come out and for the server to come back and take our order, we won't be coming back.

Which is a shame because the food was good and the menu looked...