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New York Indian Restaurant Reviews
Surya
Down Town Manhattan, New York
(Scroll down to read the review)
Manhattan, Queens & Long Island Indian Restaurants
Reviewer's Summary: Lousy Food; So-So Service
There are a few Indian restaurants in New York City.
And then there are the many impostors. You know, the Indian restaurant wannabes.
To our discerning Indian palates, Surya on Bleeker St in downtown Manhattan belongs in the category of impostors that cast a dark stain on the reputation of fine Indian cuisine.
While Surya lays claims to offering Indian cuisine, its place belongs in the dungeons of Indian restaurant wannabes.
Our lunch at Surya the other day was a series of unrelenting assaults on the tastebuds.
A fixture at virtually every Indian restaurant in New York City, Chicken Tikka Masala shouldn't be hard to master. But not so apparently for Surya's kitchen.
Hopelessly bland in taste, Surya's Chicken Tikka Masala was a travesty of the real thing.
The rubbery texture of the Lamb Curry left us in high dudgeon. Tandoori Chicken had a forlorn look and an equally hopeless taste.
Since the regular Naan bread was unedible, we ordered Garlic Naan. They were not bad.
Surya is an equal opportunity offender to the tastebuds.
Vegetarian or non-vegetarian, the so-called Indian food at Surya gets the same shoddy treatment. Even desserts are not spared.
Sag Channa was a bland mess while the Alu Baingan tasted sour.
The flavorless Dal Makhani and Mushroom Alu Mutter didn't do much to improve our mood.
With all hope turning into despair, we now turned our attention to dessert only to encounter further misery.
Besides lacking the mango flavor, the Mango Halwa ($5.00) was also lacking in sugar. We found the Vermicelli Payasam so sweetless that we wondered if it was directed at diabetics.
If there was a Nuremberg court for bad Indian restaurants, Surya's chef would easily qualify for the maximum sentence.
Besides the passable Garlic Naan, the only other palatable item of our lunch mishap was the cup of Black Coffee.
And for some inexplicable reason, we were not charged for the Garlic Naan.
Service is so-so at Surya. Although the restaurant was mostly empty during our meal, our waiters were desperate to remove our plates before we'd had even completed.
We were never offered a choice of sitting in the restaurant's garden though we saw other diners being offered the choice.
There's another distressing thing we noticed at Surya - People were often entering the restaurant from the Street, lifting up the covers of various dishes on the buffet table, looking at them and walking off. Strangely enough, the restaurant's staff made no attempt to stop this practice.
To add insult to injury, this restaurant adds 20% tips to a Buffet lunch!
Our waiter was not pleased when we asked him for a copy of the itemized bill.
Among the scores of Indian restaurants we've been to in New York City and Long Island, Surya easily ranks among the worst. - © Rekha Inc.
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