OK, so the good news is that the other night we went to Royal Indian Cuisine in Duluth and had a really nice dinner. The food was delicious. The bad news, as far it goes, is that the service, while polite, was not great. So, what does that mean? I don’t know. I think I’ll need to give the place a second chance to prove that our experience was an aberration.
I guess you’ll need the whole story, so here it goes. On Friday night, Johanna and I were trying to figure out where to eat. We batted around a couple of ideas, including going to the store for something to cook, but that was KO’d pretty quickly. Johanna said she was up for Indian food. I was OK with the idea, but haven’t even noticed an Indian restaurant in the general area, so I was at a loss.
“No worries,” she said. “I know of one.” And so off we went.
If you didn’t know where Royal is, you’d probably drive right by it. It’s set back from the road, and the sign for the restaurant is hidden among the several other businesses listed on a big, strip-mall-like marker. But the restaurant is pretty big, with two large dining rooms (one that can be rented for large functions) and a buffet table that is in use during the day. We were immediately seated in a booth, handed menus and asked what we’d like to drink. Water for her, an unsweetened iced tea for me (in the South, if you don’t tell ’em what you want, you’ll get sweet tea; that’s the default). We were also given a basket of Indian papad chips and two dips.
Now, as I have written before, I like Indian cuisine, but don’t know much about it. I know what I like, but until I try it, I don’t know if I’ll like it. After a quick look through the menu, we made our selections and when the waiter came back with two glasses of water, we put in our order: Samosas, garlic naan and kheema naan as appetizers, chicken tikka masala for her and lamb korma for me.
We had a nice meal at Royal Indian Cuisine, even if we weren’t served what we ordered. In this spirit, here is a photo of some food at Royal. What it is exactly,though, I can’t say.
I like lamb, and have generally been happy with lamb dishes (as related in this review of Niramish). The description of lamb korma—coconut-based creamy curry with pieces of lamb—sounded good, as did the kheema naan—ground lamb with spices stuffed into a piece of flat bread. But I’m also a bit of a spice wimp sometimes, and on this night, I didn’t want to start sweating buckets, so I asked the waiter to have it prepared mild.
We munched on the papad chips until our dinner was served and, it being past 9 p.m. already, we attacked the food. I reached first for the kheema naan ($2.99), took a bite and, wow, that was not what I expected: it was sweet and coconutty and had no lamb flavor whatsoever. But it was good. Dessert good. Like get-your-own-this-is-mine good.
Having tried and liked (even if we didn’t understand it), we moved on to our entrées. I put some rice on a dish, spooned some of the lamb korma ($10.99) over it and took a bite. The lamb was tender with a good flavor, and the curry sauce was tasty, too, but wait; what’s that? It was getting hot. This… was not… mild. But again, it was good. I’d have to deal with the heat because it was good. I’ll just have a big gulp of iced tea… but, where is it? There was no tea.
While I asked again for a glass of tea, Johanna was enjoying her chicken tikka masala ($10.99)—boneless and grilled in Tandoor and then cooked in Royal’s signature butter-creamy tomato sauce—which she said was just perfect.
With a stack of extra napkins, I was able to finish my meal and not end up totally soaked. I really liked the flavor of the lamb korma, but I could have done with a milder version. When the check came, it solved one mystery. Instead of getting the Kheema naan, we were served Kashmiri naan ($2.49, naan stuffed with nuts, dry fruits and cherry paste).
It was at this point that I started adding up all the things that weren’t right about our meal. First, I just realized, that we didn’t get our order of somosa. Then there was no tea. And the korma/Kashmiri kerfuffle. Finally, my not-mild lamb korma. And now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t think he wrote anything down, but tried to memorize it all.
Despite all of the mistakes, we still managed to have a nice meal, even if it wasn’t exactly the one we ordered. So we’ll go back once more, to see if the service problems were a one-off or systemic. Check back, we’ll let you know.
Royal Indian Cuisine
4315 Abbotts Bridge Rd.,
Duluth, Ga. 30097
678.469.0540
Post by and photos credited to Gregory Watkins.
