Situated on Lygon Street (towards Queensberry end) this is small place which i enjoy getting a lunch time curry.

i found the quality to be good and the portion a reasonable size.

the deals are about $10 each for lunch

service is efficient and i do not have to wait long for my order. the staff are very polite and smiling which is nice.

Great food! The staff is great! The have a lot of options in the menu. The chilli chicken & masala dosa are my favourite items from the menu. The quantity is not that great but still worth a try!

They have a very long menu .. it takes awhile for you to choose what you want to eat. but once you order their food, you will get this beautiful taste in your mouth! the other day i had chicken biryani, manchurian, butter chicken, chicken 65, and roti.. everything was GREAT! plus the staff know what on their menu very well (acknowledge) ~~ will dine there again.

Food and service was both excellent.
They have a very extensive menu too. Highly recommended if you would like to have some authentic Indian food. Great value for money too

I've visited Namaste twice so far. The first time, I ordered a curry with rice and naan. I can't be certain which curry it was, because my first visit was several months ago now, but it was almost certainly butter chicken, of which I am rather fond. Butter chicken tends to be my benchmark dish for an Indian restaurant: if they can't make a good one, then forget it - I probably won't be back. This curry was very enjoyable, as was the naan that I ordered with it. I also tasted some of the curries ordered by my dining companions. All were good, and I was satisfied.

On my second visit, I ordered a chicken tikka masala dosa, and didn't like it at all. The pancake was unpleasantly bitter, and the filling stodgy and uninteresting. To be fair, this was the first time I had ever tried a dosa, and I am unsure whether the problem is with Namaste's execution of this particular dish, or whether it's just that I don't like dosa. I suspect the latter.

One thing that grabs the attention at Namaste is the rather startling menu - and that's not necessarily a compliment. The restaurant claims to provide "traditional Indian cuisine", yet in the next breath it cheerfully admits to offering many Indo-Chinese and Malaysian dishes. Now, I'm accustomed to eating at Malaysian restaurants (among others) where the menu contains a strong Indian influence. That's to be expected. Settlement by Indians is a part of Malaysian history, and naturally has had a profound and lasting influence on the cuisine. But the other way round? Indo-Chinese dishes at a supposedly traditional Indian restaurant?

The other startling thing about the menu is that it is very, very long. I have just visited Namaste's website, and at the time of writing this review, the online menu consists of 200 items, not counting drinks. That is one helluva menu, and I don't mean that in a good way. In his book "Never Order Chicken on a Monday", former food critic Matthew Evans (he of "Gourmet Farmer" on SBS) warns diners to be wary of long menus, because (with the exception of Chinese restaurants), in his experience menu length tends to be inversely proportional to the WOW! factor of the food. No chef, he says, is good at everything. No one is that talented, nor should we expect them to be. Better to concentrate on a small number of dishes, and do them brilliantly, than try to be all things to all people. Is this rule of thumb true of Indian restaurants, or should they be considered an exception, like Chinese restaurants? Hard to say, on the basis of only two visits so far, but on the face of it, 200 menu items would seem to be stretching the talent thinly enough to make one a bit nervous.

Service was prompt both times I visited, even though the place was packed on both occasions. I do have one quibble with the service, which is common to a few other Indian restaurants in this area such as Balti's, but is particularly irksome at Namaste. The tables are tiny - really tiny - and Indian meals often consist of an array of dishes - the curry, the rice, the bread. Add to that the drinks, and often a separate empty plate for each diner, to pile the food onto. That takes up a lot of room on the table. The waiters make one or two trips from the kitchen, fill the table with plates, and then they carry out yet another lot of dishes and stand there, arms loaded with plates, looking puzzled about how they're going to cram it all into the non-existent vacant space on the tiny table. As they stand there with their arms full, looking at the diners expectantly as though we have the solution, I find myself trying to rearrange things while thinking grumpily: hey, guys, it's not my job to find room on the table! Get bigger tables, or spread the diners out a bit.

None of this has put me off Namaste - not the dosa, not the incredibly long menu, not the tiny tables. I will definitely go back there again; I just won't order the dosa next time. I'll revise my rating upwards if I have a better experience next time.

I looooooove this restaurant and me we always go there. The staff are really friendly and they try they best to prepare the food that you like and make you happy.

Their food is little bit hot for my test.

Try their pancakes, they are really interesting(look and taste)

Approximate cost: $12

This is one of the Indian restaurants I will often go to. Food is affordable and comes in huge portions (if you order the briyani). Love the spices in it. Stronger spiciness is also available upon request.

Approximate cost: $10

The food is authentic with a touch of western taste to also suit the people in australia. Relax and atmosphere good for gatherings or group dinner. Good service