Mela Tandoori Kitchen

Mela HAS to re-​open soon. Love that place! The décor, ambiance, and the service was second to none. The food isn’t the best I’ve ever had… the cheese cubes in the Paneer Tikka Masala were a bit rubbery… but the reason why this place deserves 5 stars is for…
Strawberry Lassi
ROSE PETAL Lassi.
OMG. I can STILL taste them!!! What other Indian places in San Francisco offer drinks like that? I haven’t been able to find one. Mela HAS to reopen if only for those lassis!!!

This place has the best Indian/​Pakistani food I have had in the States.
⁵⁄₅ for mixed grill with all the meats basically (everything perfectly cooked and seasoned… YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMY)
⁵⁄₅ for chicken tikka masala (I am starting to get really hungry right now…)
⁶⁄₅ for Chai (best Chai tea I have EVER had!)
3.5÷5 for chicken samosa (good but not great)
⁰⁄₅ (THEY ARE CLOSED!!! WHERE THE **** ARE YOU MELA TANDOORI KITCHEN!!! They said they were relocating, but that was like 4 months ago!!!)
All in all, GREAT food… but you can’t have it, because THEY ARE CLOSED.

My favorite Indian food in the city… Teresa W. says it’s relocating. I hope this is true and it’s not just closing.
LOVE the food here!

Sad that this place is relocating =(
It was a regular spot for my friends and I
Great times here, great hookah, and great service and atmosphere
The seating is super cool low to the ground seats and tables with great interior decoration. Really makes you feel the vibe and everything with hookahing. I love the music too, they play mainstream sometimes too and I just always want to get up to dance LOL
Can’t wait for it to come back!

My friends and I always go here when there is nothing else to do or there is plenty of things to do! This is our favorite place in San Francisco and we don’t know what we would do if it wasn’t here. This place may lie in some sketchy looking parts of downtown, but seriously, there’s like a Starbucks and Hilton hotel right near by so it’s whatever. The people you see and may be iffy about don’t bother you at all, unless they’re asking for some spare change.
But anyways! When you go down the stairs, you are greeted by a beautiful tiled fountain and lots of eye candy. To your left is their hookah lounge which has the best looking ceilings ever, and to your right is their restaurant. I’m reviewing on their hookah lounge, just to let you know. Their décor is fabulous. Their bathrooms are pretty nice looking too. I just wish some girls would stop breaking the glass wall next to the sink. HAVE A LITTLE DECENCY, LADIES. Ok, thanks.
Before hand, you can actually reserve tables for yourself if you call in. So that’s why it may take some time for them to seat you. Also, if you come in during rush hour when everyone else is coming in, it can get a little hectic. They always find you a place though. I don’t like being next to the air filters that they have because me and my friends like doing O’s or other sort of tricks. But yeah.
All their hookah flavors are different and not one of them is like the other. I’ve tried most of them from grape soda to tequila sunrise. Delish. I would have to say if it’s your first time hookahing, try some White Peach or Winterhellafresh. They’re pretty bomb. White Peach is always a neutral for me since it doesn’t get too light or too strong. They added a few more new flavors to their palette, such as Zodiac’s Mixx, which is pretty damn good. It does take them some time to bring out the hookahs because they hand wash all of them.
The people that work here are very, very nice and friendly. Some even come and smoke with you! There was this one time my two friends and I came during their closing hours, and they wouldn’t take us. So we used their bathroom, but one of the people said that we could smoke for an hour if we wanted. So we took that opportunity. Turns out that we smoked for almost 3 hours AND they served us lunch! That was a good day and Mela’s totally gained our respect too.
During the time I’ve been going to Mela’s, I’ve also met a lot of people. If you have the right kind of attitude to just party and meet other people, this is the place! Even though I’ve said it may take some time for them to get things, it is DEFINITELY well worth the wait. The atmosphere, the people, the servers … Everyone is so friendly and nice. I love it here. Best gem in the city so far. (:

Came here a while ago with a couple of buddies for a quick hookah session (quick as in… a while…). It was all right, it’s just hookah to me. My friends were raving about how amazing everything was and how the ambience was blahblahblah. It was nice, a little hard to breathe after awhile which can be a problem with an asthmatic weakling like me (mostly because like another Unilocaler said, it gets really damn hot), but that’s fine. Prices are reasonable and the employees seem really nice which is always a plus. I would’ve missed the place completely if I wasn’t looking for it. Thank god for traffic time right?
However their patrons that night were… wow. Maybe if they stopped taking pictures with flash on the world would be much better. It’s all fine and dandy to take a few but all night long? How many pictures can you bloody take with that stupid camera?! They looked like they were the 19 – 20 year old crowd so I forgive them. I was once young and carefree too.
That being said:
19 and 20 year olds are prohibited from ordering and consuming alcoholic drinks aren’t they?
1+1+1+1 = good hookah night + good ambiance + good prices + good location (it’s not a bad area unless you’re there at what…3 in the morning? GO TO SLEEP!)
–1 = drunk underage teenagers

In this case I wish for 2.5 stars.
This place is decent, and they make a good selection of curries, but I felt that
a) they put too much sugar in the food, and sometimes in the wrong places– I agree with another review above that mentions sugar in the raita is bad.
b) more importantly, they put way too much oil in the food. This is one of my pet peeves about indian restaurants and unfortunately it exists here.
c) they have a really dingy set of carpeting (like bordering on black in spots) and the place feels a bit sticky in that sort of never-​really-​cleaned way. I can also say that the bathrooms have the exact same «nice presentation but the dirge in the details can be scary» vibe.
All in all, I liked the flavors of the food and I enjoyed it… But I probably wouldn’t frequent this place.
It was much MUCH better when it was SHALIMAR.
ld

Oh, shut up with your «armpit of San Francisco» business. Mela’s is what, two blocks off of Union Square? Go take a walk through parts of the Mission or Hunter’s Point and tell me that O’Farrell and Taylor is really all THAT bad.
Mela’s is great! The staff are very accommodating, and you can smoke hookah while you eat (or before/​after). The prices are really reasonable, and the food is tasty. Make sure you ask for spicy, unless your tastebuds are ultra-​Americanized. Oh, and try their naan, it’s super fluffy but still crisp.
Love the décor and the fountain, too.

When I walked into this place, down a flight of stairs, and ended up with a gorgeous fountain at my feet in a dimmly lit small octagonal, beautifully tiled room, I think I may have actually gasped. It is so beautiful! I was sure that unless anything really went wrong, this would get 4 if not 5 stars. I was wrong!!!
I think we may have come on a bad day… apparently there was a big party in the other room… but we only found that out after we complained about the automatic addition of a 20% tip, when we had been neglected all evening… We ordered 3 beers, 3 appetizers and 6 entrees. It took 30 minutes to get the BEER. And we did not see our waiter once during that 30 minute wait. I’m in the restaurant business. Don’t tell me that was because of a party in the other room. I know better. 10 minutes? Maybe. Even that’s stretching it. Not 30.
If they had simply let us know that things might be on the slow side, and made an effort to make the wait more enjoyable… or even checked in to see if everything was ok ONCE after the food was dropped… we probably wouldn’t have complained.
That said, everything else was reasonably nice. If they improved their wait staff I would have them 4 stars.
Incredible décor. Sexy, exotic, and somehow unpretenious. Really really nice. The food was good. Some dishes I would even call «very good». But the sweet raita was definately a turn off.
I will come back again, and give them a second chance. Cause if the service really was a fluke, I would love this place. But if it happens again, I will not return.

The naan + hummus here is amazing! It’s a lovely snack to have with beer and hookah. Even if you’re doing neither, you should still try it (it’s that good).
I was first introduced to hookah at this restaurant. They have a pretty impressive selection of flavors compared to other places I’ve been to. My friends and I like the white peach or sex on the beach (: But keep in mind hookah is like death for your lungs, so don’t get too carried away.
It’s a great place to chill on a late night out with friends. It’s hard to find parking on weekend nights though, and the neighborhood is a little scary, so be careful.

Four solid stars. I really want to give 5 but can’t due to the overwhelming high school population that frequents this place for their cool hookah assortment. We came on a Friday at 8pm for my birthday dinner. I made a ressie but when we arrived they still had to put the tables together for 8. No biggie it look like a second to do. The food was very tasty and the portions are good. They look small but they are very filling and we ended but having a ton of left overs which I never mind.
It was pretty empty when we arrived but at one point when I headed to the restroom the foyer was packed with backpack clad, rude, kids who don’t believe in moving out of the way. Since the hookah room was filled to the brim, the over flow were seated in our dining room. These kids were so hard up to get high on flavored tobacco they set their water pipe up on a side table and stood while smoking. pretty ridic if you ask me.
All in all I enjoyed the the place as it’s decorated authentically and tastefully. I just wish they would keep the kids to the 1 room opposed to letting them out of the cage.

Great food, but…
They let people smoke the hookah in the restaurant, thus quickly making it nearly unbreathable. I could even have tolerated it if they had a smoking and non-​smoking room. They do not.
After a (admittedly delicious) meal at Mela, I was struck by how gross the air in the restaurant had been when i walked outside into the night air When the Tenderloin’s piss-​soaked and cigarette-​filled air smells fresh, that’s a problem.
UPDATE: The owner contacted me and we discussed the Hookah thing. He agreed to keep Hookahs out of the main dining room during prime dinner hours. With that said, I’m happy to give them 5 stars, as their Naan really is the best in town.

THANK GOD FOR GOOD FRIENDS!!!
If it wasn’t for Jennifer I never would have eaten here. This nice little place is downstairs from a. Moroccan restaurant? anyhow its a little hole in the wall place and the food and service is FANTASTIC!
You can sit in regular tables OR the tiny tables that are customary (I’m 5’11″ with bad knees so if you think I was gonna test my luck ur insane) THe only thing that could use some work is the bathroom. It’s very different and I don’t mind that, maybe if it looked a bit cleaner though.
Anyways I’m coming back for more of that spicy food. yummm
Oh and we ordered ours to be mild. and it was oooweee spicy haha.

Buttery Times! You may be a butter hog or you may be a butter snob. One thing to note is that the flavor of butter is mighty distinct in the dishes. You can go on butter patrol or you can add some butter to your fat roll. I chose the latter. The food was scrumptious and indulgent.
The beer bottles they serve are huge! I got the Sula Shiraz and thought it was very tasty for a $ 6 glass. I appreciated that they cut the naan into convenient quadrants for you, but the butter flavor was particularly pronounced on the bread.
I dined here in a party of 20 and the experience was superb! The service was excellent. This is a great place to celebrate milestones, such as your husband’s parole; the day you dumped your cheating ex; Athiest Day; or even your birthday. I will certainly dine here again. Though, someone at the dinner mentioned that there is a Morrocan restaurant next door, so I’m taking that into serious consideration.

Jonny’s Grassroots Rating System (GRS) is:
People
Ambience
Food/​Drinks
(see profile for extensive explanations)
People
— So the crowd here was cool… enough. The hookah area is kinda funky, but I imagine if you had a big ass, you’d have a bit of a problem sitting on the little stools. Maybe add some futons, or pillows? And that amazing Indian girl — I am single, please pm me.
Also the manager — his name sounded like Moist — (sorry man, I was a bit tipsy) was cool — took our pics for his Facebook page. Cool guy.
Ambience
— Good music — but I personally like punjabi-​esque music. I like it. Some of my friends don’t. haha — deal with it! Lighting is good, not too bright. Again, if the place was a bit warmer, I think it’d be great.
Food/​Drinks
— The second type of white wine (not chardonnay) is good — nice full glass for 6 bucks. PLEASE try the hookah — half off on Sundays! Tropical Guava and Banana Cream — good stuff. Probably the best shisha I’ve smoked in a while. If anyone knows where they get their stuff, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. pm me.
So over all, a good place — I’ve had some of the food, it’s good but not the best. It will continue to be a lounge and hookah bar for me.

I see most of the previous reviewers raving on the food. Either I went on a bad day or my taste buds have gotten bad, but I did not particularly like the food there. Maybe I am just too spoiled by other good indian eateries around there.
While the food was the best I have had, I loved the place and setting. Its in a basement with two sections, one for dining, one for hookah. You can dine at the hookah section if you wish. I did not do the hookah this time, but I’d love to go another time just for the hookah.

I ate here about 3 years ago and I remember being very enchanted by the fountain in the entrance way and even more so by the rose milk drink.
Shortly after that I studied abroad in India and of course had some of the best Indian food of my life over there.
I was pleasantly surprised that the food at Mela is some of the best Indian food I’ve had post living in India. I ordered the veggie samosas which were light and had a nice flavor and consistency, not too doughy or greasy which can be a problem at other places. I also ordered the Palak Paneer and an Aloo dish with caramelized onions which I had never heard of before, but they were both delicious.
To top it all off I had my favorite dessert, Falooda, and it was enormous and beautiful and amazing.
I’m happy I re found this restaurant, oh and the prices are fantastic for such high quality food.

I used to live 2 blocks from this restaurant and never went because it didn’t look like anything special but when my friend decided to have her wedding reception there I decided I’d check it out. I would have never imagined how beautiful the interior was by walking by. The fountain and tile work in the entrance and the metalwork on the ceiling is beautiful and the choice of 2 different types of seating with regular or low tables make this place unique. Its a great date place and their sauvignon blanc from India is actually pretty good.
In addition to the great atmosphere, the food is excellent. The only downside to this place is that the wait staff is a little slow.

This tasty, enjoyable Pak-​Indian restaurant is a good compromise between the hearty but greasy goodness you find deeper in the hood, and the blander efforts to go white tablecloth with Indian food. Mela has usual tandoori, briyani, vindaloo, masala, paneer, and curry, but more subtly seasoned, elegantly presented, and cooked to order with crunchy fresh ingredients. Call it red tablecloth.
Down the wide twisty stairs from the gritty street a block on the wrong side of the Union Square /​Tenderloin cease fire line, and you’re in the bat cave of pleasure’s octagonal fountain court. In front, a low slung hooka lounge. To the left passageways leading who knows where. To the right a dim red dining room of handmade tapestries and metal decorations, candles in holders, wall murals and hand painted architectural details, little speakers blaring Indian trance pop disco.
Prices are $ 7 – 12 per dish, $ 4 – 6 for appetizers. Add raita, chutney, rice, bread, lassi, and dessert and it’s $ 15 – 25 per head. This 50% premium buys you extra tasty food, bigger portions, full table service, ambiance, and presentation. Food arrives in covered metal serving bowls, and plates are hand decorated unglazed ceramics. Charming.
Service was a near disaster. Waiters came sporadically, forgot a dish, didn’t communicate with each other or the kitchen, and mis-​totaled the bill $ 4 in our favor — yippee! Other tables were visibly upset. At best it’s inevitably slow. That would kill the place if the food weren’t so tasty.
For locals, say, a casual date for a new friend plus more? For tourists who need a spontaneous bite, a godsend compared to worse food at twice the price in the hotel.

On of my fave places. I really want to steal those embossed tin tables. I asked them once where they got them from. They said India, but when I went there I never found anything like it. Oh well, it’s a big country.
The mushroom dishes are great. everything is good and spicy that I’ve tried. The staff is friendly and I like the music. They’ve had a dj a few times I went there. Definitely it’s like you’re entering a calm space when you go down the stairs from the street and get to the fountain.