Daawat

Got saffron rice, butter chicken, butter naan, all were delicious! Delivery arrived right on time. Will be ordering again! :)

I order from Dawaat by phone. They have free delivery if you order is over $ 30.00. The prices are lower than both The Spice Grill and Naanolicious. My husband also likes their palik paneer better than the others. The butter chicken rocks, but my favorite is the lamb vindaloo.
I have eaten their buffet once. It was ok. Cheaper than Narayanni’s around the corner. Maybe not as extensive, but pretty good.
They have a beautiful beer selection! Kind staff. Parking in the back ally.

I have never had butter chicken as good as this place makes it. I would journey across middle-​earth for this stuff. Seriously. A ring into Mount Doom? How about butter chicken from Daawat into my mouth.
¹⁰⁄₁₀ would go here again. And the servers are like the best boy/​girlfriend you could have; Attentive, but not too clingy. Just perfect.

I used to go to Daawat a lot when it was down on 34^th ave. I was thrilled when they expanded and opened a second location on Whyte, and then sad when they closed the 34^th ave location. But… I do make it for dinner once in a while (okay, to be honest, this was my first visit in a couple of years). I’ve only ever had buffet… good prices if you ask me. $ 21.95 for dinner… and I believe $ 14.95 for lunch.
It’s not a huge buffet, but I’ve never been disappointed. Saffron rice, butter chicken, veg pakora, veg korma, chili fish (sometimes chili chicken), and tandoori chicken are always on hand, and those are always my go-​tos. I’m not sure if something’s changed in the last couple of years, but the quality seems to have improved (not that there was anything wrong with it in the past!). The only change I noticed that I don’t love is that the butter chicken hardly has any spice to it at all anymore. I’m sure if you order off the menu you can ask for more of a kick.
I love that they bring a basket of naan to your table, rather than having you pick it off the buffet. It seems fresher this way.
The service is kind of amusing. They don’t seem to assign sections to the servers, they all just work where ever they’re needed. Which sometimes results in 2 or 3 people asking if you need anything within a 5 minute time frame. This could be really annoying, but they’re all really friendly and it didn’t bother me. The water glasses always stay full, so I can’t complain!
They do have an impressive beer cooler you can choose from if you’d like. There are 2 beers from India and then about 100 from other areas lol Honestly, I can never drink anything other than water when I’m here… there’s just too much food.
And if you don’t eat all your naan, you can take it home :)
They quite regularly have groupons available, so check it out before you head there for dinner!

Amazing Indian food. Tons of vegetarian options, amazing service, affordable prices and has NEVER let me down. Honestly, probably one of my favourite restaurants in Edmonton.

I really liked this place! The service was good and food was good too. We used our Groupon and the waiter gave us really good suggestions. The lamb rice is absolutely yummy! Will go there again.

This place is awesome! Super cute and on Whyte Ave. I went in the evening and was surprised to see they had a buffet on at dinner! So cool. It smells amazing– and I heard a rumour their naan is vegan. Need to confirm but so awesome!

⁴⁄₅ because the chicken for the butter chicken was firm when it should have been tender.
Food is really good though, the place is very comforting. The naan bread, Mmm it’s so good. The server will ask you what kind you want, butter, garlic, coconut, plain. I got garlic and it was really good and plenty.
I would go back.

Delicious and reasonably priced. The big attraction here seems to be the AYCE buffet, but we went for a couple of individual dishes: the curry chicken and the Chana masala. Both were great, with the requested spiciness, and served fairly quickly.
A bonus is their bottled beer selection. You serve yourself from the fridges near the door and they have probably close to 100 types of beer spanning a wide range of tastes.

I’ve never had Indian food before. My husband ordered through JustEat so I could give it a try. We had Butter Chicken, Saffron Rice, Na’an, Veggie Samosa’s, and some lamb dish that he picked.
I thought this was really great. The food was flavorful, and even though we had it delivered, it was still hot, seemingly fresh, and the order was correct. I will order again, and more than likely, stop in!

Awesome service. Large selection of all you can eat items. I’m a regular and have only had great experiences!

Incredible food. I had chicken tikka and it was amazing. I had it delivered via skip the dishes and it took over an hour but it was definitely worth the wait.

I love this place. The food is great, the service is friendly and helpful and the ambiance is lovely. My go-​to place in my neighbourhood.

Love Dawat. They take their time to deliver, but it’s well worth the wait.
Don’t have extensive knowledge of their menu, because the beef vindaloo and lamb curry are so hood, I can’t get past them. The lamb is so good I’d lick it off the floor. Mulligatawny soup is delicious, too.

LOVE this place!
The service is flawless and the staff attentive, the food is consistently delicious and hot, and the restaurant itself is cute and always clean — this is hands down my favorite restaurant on Whyte ave.
I’ve taken friends, family, and coworkers here many times, and I’ve yet to have a negative experience.

I absolutely love this East Indian Restaurant, its comparable in quality and flavors to Khazana’s and very reasonably priced. Always quick an friendly service, and a very amazing menu to choose from. Our favourite spot on Whyte Avenue.

I’ve actually never been inside here, but I’ve ordered delivery several times. I can’t speak for all the dishes but the few I had were quite tasty. To be honest, I’m not much of a fan of Indian food, but I don’t know if I can’t claim that anymore after trying their Butter Chicken. It had the perfect seasonings and amount of spice; combined with the coconut rice I ordered, it was blissful! Do yourself a favour and order some of that doughy goodness they call Naan Bread (I ordered the Garlic Naan and use it to lap up all my extra Butter Chicken sauce). Mmm. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. One dish I would not recommend is the fried/​battered cheese bits (The name escapes me but it is an appetizer dish). They sounded delicious but were dry and relatively flavourless.

This is some of the best Indian good I have tried. I ordered the Rogan Josh and they gave it just the right amount of spice. The portions were great for the price. The naan bread was made in the restaurant I always love that and it was very well done. The over all quality of the food was what you would expect from traditional Indian cuisine. They had a fully stocked beer fridge you help yourself to and they bring you a glass. They have a lot of great international choices. They only down side to this restaurant was the service, this particular day anyways. When we were greeted it was like we were being turned away for service because the Buffett was closing at 2. However we stayed not even knowing about the Buffett and as we watched we learned a lot of customers come for the Buffett and don’t realize it closes and we saw a lot of people leave because of this. However, I understand this my be an annoying issue but is still rude to greet customers by, «Um Buffett closes at 2»

I’m a big fan of Daawat. Their buffet is fair priced ($ 20 I believe) and they’re just conveniently located for me. Most of the other Indian restaurants are further South. They don’t have a very large selection for buffet, but the quality of each dish is very high and they have all the staples that you’d expect. I’ve never ordered from their menu so I can’t comment on that. The naan is included in the cost of the buffet and they have multiple varieties of naan, so that’s a nice bonus. And it’s generally pretty good quality — I normally go for garlic naan.
They recently changed up their interior and got rid of their old funky looking furniture, which I actually kind of liked. It feels much more generic looking now in their attempt to look «modern». But for me, the food comes first and there doesn’t seem to have been a dip in the quality of food, so I’m content. Service is not really an issue if you’re getting buffet but it’s been good anyway. So all in all, it’s a favourite of mine. A very casual place that’s close-​by to go and grad some buffet.

I am sad to be downgrading Daawat, but after repeated incidents of what we have termed «food racism», enough is enough, time for an updated review.
Food racism in my experience as a Caucasian is when you go to non-​western food restaurant and they serve you food they think you will like because you’re white, versus what you have ordered.
The last 3 times we have been to Dawaat, twice with an older Caucasian friend, we have ordered our food spice level hot, or ‘desi hot’ to get the point across that yes, we really like spicy food and have lots of experience with it. There are some newer staff versus the ones we know well. If these newer staff are working, no matter what heat level we order, it comes out mild. Then when we tell the server it’s not hot, we get this incredulous look like we don’t know what we’re talking about. Yes he takes it back to the kitchen, they chop up some extra chillies, mix it in, reheat the dish, and then maybe it comes out medium spice. But seriously, like that is acceptable or even appetizing!
It has now gotten to the point that if these staff are working, we just order the buffet instead of going through the food racism song and dance again. We did that today, but our companion took a leap of good faith and ordered off the menu, hot spice. What he got back had barely any spice and a whole lot of oil. I know Punjabi style cooking can be heavy on the ghee but this was ridiculous. He sent it back, per usual, and got the usual result. Not impressed.
I haven’t done Indian buffet in a long time, with good reason. No spice! Green chilli chutney will only go so far and I am not a fan of achar. Sweet runny chana masala, over cooked dry curry beef, terrible veg pakora with potatoes so over cooked they were like red pucks, fish pakora transformed into fish curry making a soggy mess — really not great. The Mulligitawny soup was good as was the Punjabi Dal, but other than that nothing to recommend.
So disappointing. Time to move on from Daawat — and just after they finally did renos!
Oh yeah and they have no more bar service — used to have a great drink selection, made a mean Side Car. It’s a real shame, the owners are really nice. They bought a steak restaurant in Nisku (?!) not long ago so maybe that’s where the attention is going, because Daawat’s quality has really slipped.