Anh S.
Yelp
I genuinely have nothing against mom-and-pop restaurants -- some of my favorite meals have come from tiny kitchens -- but this place is nowhere near the standard you'd expect in Reston Town Center.
We were a party of six with a reservation, but apparently that just meant we got to wait 10 minutes in the lobby pretending we weren't starving. From the moment we walked in, everything felt chaotic. Staff were darting around with no system, and while everyone was polite, not one person looked like they had ever worked in a restaurant before.
We started with the puri puri, which came out as a soggy shell with a little potato, a bit of egg, and a chutney so cold and dull it could've been straight from the fridge. Then came the fish pakora -- or as I now call it, "The Iceberg." I took one bite and the fish inside was frozen solid. The batter outside was warm-ish, the middle was an arctic expedition. No apology, no manager, nothing. They removed it from the bill but never brought a replacement or checked in. When we finally told them to cancel it, they said, "Yeah, we didn't make another one anyway." Perfect.
The entrées didn't help. We ordered chicken vindaloo (2), chicken curry (2), chicken biryani, tandoori chicken, and butter chicken -- and they brought two tiny bowls of white rice for six people. When we asked for more, they reacted like we were asking for gold bullion: "Oh... you want more rice? We can bring more. Don't worry." Very weird.
We're Middle Eastern and Asian -- spices are not new to us -- but even the mild dishes came out aggressively spicy, overly salty, and strangely lukewarm. Everything tasted like it had been heated unevenly, hot on the outside and warm or cold in the center. At this point I honestly wasn't convinced there was an actual chef back there.
Service? Terrible. No refills, no check-ins, and even the soda tasted off. The menu said Coca-Cola, but what we got was some flat, sugary off-brand that tasted like a childhood birthday party gone wrong.
Between the cold food, chaotic service, untrained staff, and the mandatory 20% gratuity, this was a full disappointment. And I still don't know why "wild boar" is on an Indian menu