Adda Indian Canteen

Summary

This Indian restaurant has been around for a few years and has actually garnered a lot of positive attention. I had seen this on Seamless a few times, and it was close to where we live such that walking to here would be very easy. When you walk in, the atmosphere is pretty loud and lively. The walls are decorated with prints of newspapers, so it presents itself as a rather trendy place.

The Thumbs Up soda was basically Indian cola. It didn’t taste quite like coca cola or pepsi, but maybe a blend of the two.

The mango lassi was basically a mango style milk shake. The mango flavors were not strong, but it definitely was fairly thick. It’s not too different than getting a mango smoothie.

The kale pakoda came with chickpea flour, chat masala, and chutneys. Think of this as basically deep fried kale in chickpea flour with a lot of indian seasonings. The sauce was actually fairly spicy, so if you can’t handle spice, be warned.

The lucknow dum biryani was slow cooked goat with basmati rice and saffron. This was cooked in a stone pot that had some of the naan-like bread on top to seal the pot. When it’s delivered to your table, the server cuts open the bread and mixes the rice, meat, and seasoning. The aroma was very flavorful with a lot of scents of Indian seasonings. The basmati rice was piping hot, but so was the seasoning in the pot. I thought the seasoning was quite spicy, so just be mentally prepared for that. There were many goat bones in it, so make sure to chew carefully. Some of the goat meat was very tender whereas others not so much. Also, the size of this pot is actually quite large, so I think it’s ideally meant for sharing.

The dilliwala butter chicken came with makhni curry, kasoori methi, and deghi mirch. The chicken was very tender, and the curry was quite flavorful. This had a lot of flavors and tasted similar to other butter chickens, but arguably, it also had much more aroma to it and was quite enjoyable.

The garlic naan was simply sublime. There was a lot of garlic in this, and dipping this into the butter chicken sauce gave it a delectable harmony of flavors.

They gave us yogurt with pomegranate with our dishes. I used this in my goat rice, adn it helped with handling some of the spices.

Service was very attentive and quick. When we sat down, the food came out within 5 minutes of ordering. Reservations were not difficult to obtain for a Saturday night, so it definitely doesn’t hurt to make one in case if you go on a popular night.

Final Verdict

If you are close to Sunnyside or towards the northern parts of Long Island City, Adda Indian Canteen is a phenomenal place to satisfy your casual Indian cravings. As a person who very rarely eats Indian, I thought this restaurant was pretty good for its price point and for its flavors.

Yelp Jabs

Overall, it wasn’t worth it. The neighborhood was sketchy. We ended up taking Uber to the subway station.

Yeah, this area is quite sketchy because it’s near the bridge that connects Sunnyside and Long Island City. Next to the restaurant, there’s a hotel that is housing transients that sit outside. Just make sure when walking around the area, that you are aware.

Food is good. Custom service is terrible. Typical desi restaurant that knows how to make food but has not mastered service at all. People try a restaurant for the food but return for service. Ordered from this restaurant and the order was wrong - they forgot to deliver an item.

We might be an exception, but we return to restaurants for the food and not the service. If the food sucks, the service doesn’t make it taste better. Also, this is yet another “delivery” review which is criticizing the logistics of the delivery, so as usual another Yelp review that was next to useless.