If you let a bunch of sloshed monkeys run amok inside the kitchen and dining room of Palace of Asia Wilmington (DE), you’re likely to end up with better curry and superior service than what woebegone us experienced during our horrid meal at this restaurant.

Folks, to describe Palace of Asia Wilmington as an authentic Indian restaurant would be a gross insult to the magnificent wonder that’s Indian cuisine and a grave injustice to the English language.

Seldom do we visit a restaurant like Palace of Asia where the food and service are in constant fratricidal battle to determine who can inflict maximum pain to the diner.

Want to know our gravamen against the place?

From the dessicated, slothful waiters to the lousy food, the cheap tipping practices and ultimately to the billing snafus, Palace of Asia is a dump.

A disgusting dump, no less.

Plain Incompetent

Try as you may, it’s hard to come up with bozos who mess up even the humble Pappadums.

But underestimate the incompetence of these Palace of Asia jokers only at your peril. They messed our Pappadums by frying it only around the edges and left the center portion incompletely fried.

Such is the relentless attention paid by Palace of Asia’s wannabe-chefs in besmirching the fair reputation of Indian cuisine.

Like at most Indian restaurants in the U.S., Green Chutney at this place too was cold, tasteless and atrocious.

Here’s a healthy dollop of advice to the bozos snoozing inside Palace of Asia’s kitchen: if you are too lazy to offer freshly prepared Chutney to diners, pick some other profession. Sell your blood plasma, wash cars with the amigos or mop the floor at Walmart but stay out of the kitchen.

Out of the kitchen, comprende. Just ensure that your presence doesn’t pollute the kitchen.

Shun the Wilmington Impostor

Art of the Big Lie

Only a fiendish monster would serve the watery, insipid Dal Makhani we got at Palace of Asia.

Guys, cattle wouldn’t sniff at such garbage. No, they wouldn’t. Casting a disdainful snort, the quadrupeds would amble away from this awful Dal Makhani.

And by way of education to those of non-Indian origin lurking around on this blog, Dal Makhani must be the simplest item in the massive pantheon of the sub-continent’s cuisine. Say, the equivalent of making an omelet.

Any schmuck should be able to do that, right? Alas, not the Joseph Mengeles at Palace of Asia practicing their hideous torture on diners.

We told ourselves that if these dickheads couldn’t get the Dal Makhani right, the odds of their getting anything right in the kitchen were low.

And lo and behold, there were few causes for cheer in our meal.

Bartha was a oily, horrible mess with a distasteful slightly sour flavor.

Navratan Korma was not far behind in the lacerations it caused to our palate. A yellow-colored, oily mess with the vegetables overcooked almost to a paste, its only redeeming feature was that it was hot temperature-wise.

Although there were only a handful of diners when we walked in for lunch, it took the slothful wait-staff wearing a perpetual mournful mien 12 minutes to get us the Naan bread, which arrived well after we started eating.

Again, the clowns in the kitchen did not let us down. The Naan bread was not properly cooked and raw in the middle.

Yet another disappointment was the Channa Palak. Unlike the inexplicably bland Palak curries we usually encounter elsewhere the saving grace here was that it was mildly spiced.

Hey, by this time we were reduced to desperately looking for saving graces. Such was our sad plight.

Dreadful Shaitans

Never let it be said that the monsters in Palace of Asia’s kitchen wreak their vengeance solely on vegetarians. These are equal opportunity shaitans.

Palace of Asia’s menu describes Chicken Vindaloo as:

Fresh chicken exotically prepared in a very spicy gravy.

That folks is not a small-sized or even medium-sized lie. It’s an epic lie as big as the Himalayas.

For the Chicken Vindaloo on our plate was not only without any exotic flavor it was also a spiceless travesty that no restaurant with any shame would place before diners.

The second Chicken item we tried – Chicken Tikka Masala – is again a common fixture at almost every Indian restaurant.

But the bozos at Palace of Asia failed to get that one too right. The chicken pieces were way too hard and the gravy wholly lacking in flavor.

Thank God for the Tandoori Chicken sans which we would’ve been in tears. Well marinated, this meat dish prepared in the tandoor (clay oven) was a rare and welcome respite from the fusillade of bad dishes fired out of the kitchen into the dining room.

The Mango custard was tasty but the Gulab Jamun was a letdown with the syrup suffered from a surfeit of sugar while the Jamuns were too soft.

Poor Service

Several plates and dessert cups had black spots on them suggesting a low priority to cleanliness.

While this is hardly unique to Palace of Asia, one expects a restaurant with such a grandiose, pompous name to be at least a little mindful of hygiene.

The silverware was kept directly on the table instead of on the napkins, the used plates were not removed promptly and our limping, short waiter had a clueless what-am-I-doing-here look and attitude.

Dirty Swines

These swines not only added a 15% tip to a horrid buffet lunch but also charged us for a Soda that we never ordered and that was never served.

Since the tips are mandatorily added to the check, we suggest to the Delaware state to investigate if such a practice is legal and if the gratuities are indeed reaching the wait staff in full.

While we paid the tip, we brought the unasked and unserved Soda issue to the attention of the fat bespectacled fella waddling around in the gray suit. Looking at our bill in a perfunctory fashion, the fatso mumbled: ‘I’ll take care of it’ but never cared to apologize.

Where the f*ck is the apology, moron?

Folks, you can be sure if ever we commit the sin of visiting this wannabe Indian restaurant again we’ll be sure to check our bill carefully. Twice.

A few months back, we paid a repeat visit to the Palace at the Ben on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. Guys, if you love Indian food as much as we do, that’s the restaurant you ought to visit not this disgraceful Wilmington impostor.

Unless you want to be gulled into parting with your money and time in exchange for faux Indian cuisine, flee from this disgusting pretender of an Indian restaurant.