text: Like many Indian restaurants, the ambiance here is a bit wonky. Perhaps that will change and become more charming as more people begin to fill the cavernous space that seemed rather empty the night we visited.\n\nThey don't yet have a liquor licence of any kind, so we couldn't have beer with our meal. The server said that was coming eventually, so I won't add or deduct any points in this review - it's just the way it goes for recently opened restaurants.\n\nService here was good, though I felt a bit like the owner was watching too closely. The question was not \"is everything ok?\" but instead \"what's the verdict?\" I got that feeling like when someone eagerly wants you to try something they made that they think is awesome, but that you know is really not that good.\n\nThe food: all of the dishes we had were simply OK, and some of them a little worse. Papadams had a very hard/stale and oily taste, which started the meal off on the wrong foot for me. The bhaji and pakora appetizers were sopping with oil and very heavy - which made me think perhaps the oil wasn't hot enough when they began frying? Anyhow, the bhaji in particular were very dense. There was also only one type of sauce which accompanied both dishes, where at other places there are a couple of different options.\n\nFor mains, my table shared lamb tikka masala, butter chicken, okra, and dal. Probably the okra was the most memorable, but only because I hadn't had okra cooked this way before. It was battered and fried with onions, spices and bits of paneer. Instead of being an okra curry, it's dry and oily, which made it not the best follow-up to the enormously oily round of appetizers. The dal seemed boring - tasted like beans, what more can I say? The lamb was cooked nicely in the tikka dish, but the sauce didn't have a lot of depth. No hot spice to speak of (maybe just because we didn't ask for it?) but also not a rich flavour from the other spices one hopes to find in the dish (and can find in Parc Ex). Butter chicken - very standard, which isn't bad, but because butter chicken is one of the more bland options one can order, it tastes better when served alongside dishes that are more exciting and spicy. The naan were enormous in size, but seemed one-dimensional, taste-wise.\n\nOverall, I would not rate the food here as bad, but also definitely not Parc Ex worthy.\n\nWhat makes this a two star and not a three star review is the price. Every dish seemed to cost a bit more than it should, and that really added up. We paid over $90 for a meal for four, not including the tip. In my experience, a similar meal at, say, Bombay Mahal would run $60 and be delicious. Fellow St Henri residents would be wise to put the money they save on food towards a metro ride: it will still be less expensive.