Tandoori Hut..A Desi Restaurant

This is my second attempt at writing restaurant reviews & today the review is on a restaurant that serves desi food and its called 'Tandoori Hut'. We had actually passed by this restaurant a couple of weeks earlier and the name 'Tandoori' caught my attention coz I am a big fan of tandoori food. And finally I got to visit this place for lunch yesterday.

To start off the review, the appearance and the ambience of the place was not very welcoming. The restaurant decor...well...it left asking for more...a 'lot lot more'. Nor was there a cheerful person at the front desk to welcome you. So we walked into this seemingly quiet place and were seated at a corner table (well...there was just only one other family around..so it had to be quiet. Can you imagine...at noon on a sunday afternoon you would expect any restaurant to be buzzing with activity. Sadly...not this one !) . Even the table arrangement was pretty shabby. Not a good first impression at all !!!

So we put behind the 'not-so-great' first impression and began our lunch. It was a buffet lunch. In a land where salads are an important part of any meal, the salads served here were not even close to appetizing. As I write this blog, I am not able to recall the salads, coz it was so badly presented that I just had a glimpse of it. Moving on to the other food..well...they did have both vegetarian and non-vegetarian...they had a couple of chicken dishes and surprisingly even beef (that was veryyy surprising, coz very few Indian restaurants serve beef). Their chicken tikka tasted absolutely lovely. It was well cooked and you could taste the wonderful masala (just goes to show how well marinated it was). But unfortunately, that seemed to be THE only dish to get a 4 star as far as taste was concerned, and yes off course the fresh nan too, which was made fresh and served hot at your table. I could probably rate the nan at four and a half out of five !!

But for these two dishes, there was not another dish that made you scream out and say 'Whowww....thats some awesome Indian food'. Their other chicken dishes seemed to lack in flavor, their dhals and veg curry seemed way off taste. Even something as popular as channa and potatoes left us wondering what was wrong with the taste!! Surprisingly, this place did not serve paneer. I say surprising coz there has never been a single tandoori restaurant that I have visited that did not serve naan and paneer !! So being a paneer fan, this was a little disappointing too !!

Finally, it was time for some desserts!!! But well..where were the desserts ? Ok...found it...tucked away in the middle of other food was 'kesari'. Just one dessert ? Thats seems weird !! Oh ok... I was wrong...there was another sweet at the other end of the table near the salad ! Well..that looked like some milk sweet...Milk Khoa..kheer ? No idea !! Coz there was no name card displaying what the dish was. Another black mark for the way the food was presented !! And let me tell you this…the desserts did not taste great either.

Usually, the way the food is presented is very important in a buffet setting. It starts with salads and appetizers...moves on to the main course and then ends with the desserts !! And every dish has a neatly placed name card to indicate what it was. But it looks like this restaurant tried to override all the rules of neat presentation !!! No name cards..no clean presentation...and not so great tasting food !! Tandoori Hut was just not a place that I would want to visit again.

But before I forget to mention, their buffet was about two to three dollars less than other places. But that still does not justify the below average spread and taste that this place offered !!! So to sum it up...Tandoori Hut was a disappointing experience!!