Ken J.
Yelp
It's hard to find anything resembling authentic Indian Food because real Indian food is very spicy, and a lot of Americans don't seem to be able to handle a great deal of spice. I understand, but I personally love spicy food.
I looked around for Indian places but a lot of their menus have a lot of beef dishes which I don't feel a real Indian place would offer. So going by that [probably flawed] logic, I looked for an Indian place with no beef dishes on their menu in the area and found Mantra.
The restaurant is in a shopping plaza and is kind of in a corner, the nameplate is unfortunately kind of hidden by this overhang the plaza decided to put over some outdoor seating in this corner. But from a distance you can see the name. The restaurant itself is kind of small but well decorated and feels cozy.
In terms of the service, the staff there is very nice, but our service was a little on the slow side. I think they might be a little short-staffed so I understand, it's not like I saw staff standing around doing nothing while patrons waited or anything like that. They were all very polite and accommodating.
The food can be ordered in mild, medium, or spicy. I asked them to do like a medium+ and the food was plenty spicy, even for me. So that's definitely a good sign that they should cater to real Indian people as well since they looooove spicy food even more than I do. The only issue I had with the food was that I ordered my dish with no cilantro, because to me the taste of cilantro is a bit overpowering and I really dislike it, but I guess the cooks couldn't help themselves but make my dish look "gourmet" so they had to do the obligatory "sprinkle green stuff over the food" as the last step in any recipe. I honestly don't understand it myself, but apparently I'm in the minority. They did offer to take it back and remake it, so I'm not going to knock them on their mistake, but I don't like wasting food, especially in a small restaurant that might be a mom and pop. So I spent the time picking out all of the cilantro, haha.
But overall, if you're a fan of Indian food and a fan of spicy food, this place is definitely a good place to try.