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| - After two mediocre Indian dinners, I needed to cleanse my palate and mind of those meals. Banjara was at the top of a list of highly-recommended places to try, so I chanced it and came here for dinner.
Saturday night, 7 pm. Prime dinner time. There's no wait, but the place is lively. That's a good sign. The tables are a little too close together, but we can handle it. Service was pretty good tonight, perhaps because we were seated four feet from the host stand where all the servers congregate.
Quick dinner combination seems to be the way to go: for $15 CAD, you get naan, rice, daal, veggie pakora, aloo gobi, rice pudding, and your choice of an entree. Great way to sample things. So my first night I got the lamb rogan josh (medium). It's a gamble because it's so easy to mess up lamb; it wasn't the most tender, but it was tasty. The daal was flavorless. I left it. Veggie pakora was amazing. I upgraded to garlic naan, but it honestly didn't make much of a difference flavor-wise. The aloo gobi is good. Rice and rice pudding were pretty standard and what you would expect; nothing special. Got our bill quickly and departed on a good note.
The second time I came here was the very next day for dinner; apparently I hyped up my night a little too much to my boss. We got seated much further away this time, next to the windows in the back. We were told that there is a button under the table that signals your server. Well, the button did not work. When we flagged down a passing server, she said that it was broken. Great. Thanks.
My boss ordered us the house mixed grill so we could try a bunch of things. The fish and chicken were the highlights of that dish; everything else was pretty gamey. Onions were on point, though.
We both still opted for the dinner combo, and this time I got the chicken korma (medium). Just a brief note: medium isn't at all spicy. Choose to go heavier if you want a kick. Anyway, the korma was fantastic, but I had the same issue with the daal (no flavor) and garlic naan (not worth the price to upgrade). Everything else was solid. They brought us chutney this time as well, which I was not fortunate enough to get during my first experience (and probably would've enhanced the lamb). Service was MUCH slower this time around, and it didn't seem like any of the servers were more than passively working. I saw our server on her cell phone behind the host stand multiple times, chatting with the other ladies.
I don't care if you chat on the job during downtime, but when people are trying to get your attention for things that they need to enjoy the meal or finish it, the least you could do is look up. Or have a working button. Second experience much more meh than the first. The food is around 3.5 stars, but the service and ambiance (or lack thereof, seeing as there's little space between you and your neighbor) drag this place down to 3 stars for me.
Maybe I'll try take away next time.
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