Taj Agra

Taj Agra is located on Mooroonday Highway in Ringwood. It has a small shop front which is easy to miss, but its near Eastland shopping centre. There is parking round the back and you can enter the restaurant from the back entrance.

Once you enter the restaurant, you are assaulted by both smell and sight. The whole restaurant is mainly red, with red carpet, walls and white chairs everywhere. The word I used to describe it was "tacky", but apparently this is traditional Indian interior decoration I was informed by Keiran. Jessie, Keiran and I were seated at a table near the front, under this carpet on the ceiling and a very nice painting/jewel artwork thing.


We ordered the banquet ($26), as that looked very nice and we wanted to try a lot of different things. We were served papadums to begin with and while we were nibbling on that and drinking our respective drinks, the entrees arrived already. As we were there early and there weren't many people yet, the food arrived quite quickly, but still enough time to finish things and have a short break in between as well.

The entrees were a Samosa each, a tangy salad and Kebabs served on a sizzling plate. The samosa was ok, but lacked flavour so I ate it with the chilli sauce, which made it a lot tastier. I liked the salad which had a tangy flavour to it. The various meats on the sizzling plate were very good, and the caramelised onion added a nice flavour. The entree servings were large for entrees.

Next up was the main banquet mains. There was Beef Vindaloo, Butter Chicken, Fish Curry (can't remember exact type), Vegetable Curry (again forgot the type), Yoghurt Dip, Rice and Garlic Naan.

I love naan, especially garlic naan so got lots of that and started piling on the curries. The beef vindaloo was extremely hot but very yummy at the same time. It went really well with the naan, which had a hint of being burnt which I like.

The other not hot curries were the fish curry and vegetable curry. The fish curry had a tomoato type flavour to it and was good too. I'm not a huge fan of fish so only had a few piece. The vegetable curry had a very interesting flavour that I couldn't identify but I particularly liked the potato pieces. I loved the butter chicken the most, as it was creamy and went perfectly with the naan. The chicken pieces were sufficently soft.

The servings were more than enough and we couldn't finish most things. I was so full I couldn't stuff down the rest of the naan even, let alone touch the rice. It seemed rather wasteful but we tried our best throughout the night and managed to stuff ourselves to maximum capacity so that only the rice and fish curry was left.



The promise of mango ice cream on the menu did not eventuate. Instead we got plain vanilla ice cream with strawberry sauce. The generic brand ice cream and strawberry sauce was the only slight disappointment of the night. To finish things off, we got coffee and tea.

The service was good, with things cleared promptly and requests for things fulfilled. Getting the waiters attention was a little harder and you had to literally stop them on their way past but otherwise service was good.

Overall Rating: 14/20, Food and service good and banquet is great value for money.

Scores: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK,some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.