Aug. 14th, 2005
restaurant review -- Bollywood Grill
Aug. 14th, 2005 09:35 pmBollywood Grill is a restaurant in North Andover I've been meaning to try for a while. Tonight Ben and I went there.
The food was quite good, prices about what one would expect for Indian, but the service was slooowwwwwww. Our waiter warned us in advance that things were very busy in the kitchen, but didn't explain why. It seemed a little odd, since the restaurant was busy, but not full. We did get our entire meal, but only after flagging someone down to bring our bread course, after we were more than halfway through the main dishes. (This was especially aggravating for me, because I usually have a bread rather than rice with my Indian food...) The same person -- probably an assistant manager -- came to us at the end of the meal and explained. Apparently they just opened another restaurant in Shrewsbury, and on top of that today was an Indian holiday, and they had catered a meal for FIVE HUNDRED people earlier in the day. So they were really, really short-staffed.
The food was good enough that I want to give this restaurant another try. We especially liked the tomato-garlic soup, which is something I could (and will) recreate pretty easily. Ben's chicken tikka masala was very good; my main dish (I cannot remember the name), a blend of mushrooms, paneer, onions, and tomatoes, would have been better with about 1/3 the amount of pepper, but was good. The breads (Garlic Naan and Khasta Roti) were worth the wait. We also had lassis -- a bit too sweet for my tastes, but that is true of just about any lassi.
The food was quite good, prices about what one would expect for Indian, but the service was slooowwwwwww. Our waiter warned us in advance that things were very busy in the kitchen, but didn't explain why. It seemed a little odd, since the restaurant was busy, but not full. We did get our entire meal, but only after flagging someone down to bring our bread course, after we were more than halfway through the main dishes. (This was especially aggravating for me, because I usually have a bread rather than rice with my Indian food...) The same person -- probably an assistant manager -- came to us at the end of the meal and explained. Apparently they just opened another restaurant in Shrewsbury, and on top of that today was an Indian holiday, and they had catered a meal for FIVE HUNDRED people earlier in the day. So they were really, really short-staffed.
The food was good enough that I want to give this restaurant another try. We especially liked the tomato-garlic soup, which is something I could (and will) recreate pretty easily. Ben's chicken tikka masala was very good; my main dish (I cannot remember the name), a blend of mushrooms, paneer, onions, and tomatoes, would have been better with about 1/3 the amount of pepper, but was good. The breads (Garlic Naan and Khasta Roti) were worth the wait. We also had lassis -- a bit too sweet for my tastes, but that is true of just about any lassi.