Maharajah
Maharajah, on Via dei Serpenti in Rome, offers good quality Indian food, but is a little overpriced and pretentious.
With the dearth of decent Indian restaurants in Rome, you generally find yourself trying to forgive a lot of failings on those that do exist. Fortunately, in the case of Maharajah, the food isn’t one of them.
We tried a range of dishes, and they were all—from the keema nan to the gulab jamun—delicious. There was also a very tasty hot sauce to go with the Tandoori chicken, with a rich flavour that gave way after a few seconds to an alarming burning sensation that moved from the back of the tongue to the front. (We tried to find out what this sauce was called, but the waiter just kept repeating “very hot, very tasty” until we left him alone. He did tell us that it was homemade, though.)
What lets Maharajah down, however, is the slightly overpriced menu (a light meal for two, with a single bottle of beer, took us over €50, and the portions were a little small), and something about the atmosphere; it’s not unfriendly, the staff certainly aren’t rude, but there’s something missing there among the ornate metal chairs and statues of Ganesh. It’s not organised enough for a formal meal, and not comfortable enough for a more relaxed occasion. So, while the food’s good, this combination of excessive price and odd atmosphere mean it’s hard to know when you’d come to Maharajah.
That said, they’re certainly successful: they have a second restaurant in Piazza Eschilo in AXA, and an Indian fast food joint on Via Mamiani near Piazza Vittorio.