Gokul Indian Restaurant Experience Summary
Staying true to my review philosophy, I'm going to give them a positive star rating because the food is excellent.
But the customer service here is god awful. It's pick-up and delivery only, and they don't let you inside the restaurant. That's not my gripe; you simply call them when you are outside, and they bring you the food.
A bit of a pandemic holdover, but whatever.
The problems are:
If the food isn't ready when they say it is, you're stuck outside
They don't communicate well when the food is ready, so you call 3+ times.
And here's the big thing, they only gave me 4 entrees when I ordered 5
Long story[1], but I was in a rush and couldn't check the order in the bag. On a $100 order, they left out an entree and refused to reimburse me. They even called me a liar on the phone when I called to tell them.
I'm still steamed about it.
Deep breath, Christopher.
The food at Gokul is great. They replace the meat in most dishes with paneer, and it makes for a lovely substitute.
The samosas are some of my favorites. And the naan is solidly better than Trader Joe's, although a bit doughy relative to House of India, which I prefer.
All in all, this is my third time ordering from Gokul, and I'll probably head back again when my sister-in-law is in town, but I'll triple-check the order that time.
The Food At Gokul Indian Restaurant
The food at Gokul is great. It's all vegetarian Indian food we get when my vegan in-laws come to town.
No chicken. No lamb. No meat.
Instead, you get paneer cheese.
Okay, my base order at any Indian restaurant is a samosa, naan, and garlic naan.
Processed carbs for the win.
The samosas at Gokul are the star and maybe my favorite samosas of all time. They're not overly fried. There's no oozing oil when you take a bite. The chickpeas in the middle are fluffy and flavorful. And the outside still has a crisp texture with a great mouth feel.
The samosas come with two sauces that are two out of five on the spice scale and serve to enhance the base flavor of the chickpea.
An overall very enjoyable experience at 2 for $4.
The plain naan, for some odd reason, was better than the garlic naan. That's a rarity as garlic naan should, in theory, strictly dominate plain naan.
My baseline naan is the frozen garlic naan at Trader Joe's. Setting that at 5 out of 10, the plain naan was a 7, and the garlic naan was a 6. So it's better than anything you'll buy at a store. My main issue with the naan was that it was overly doughy. I'd expect it to be thinner and crisper to move up the scale.
For reference, my favorite naan in St. Louis is the garlic naan at House of India. That naan is probably a 9 in my book.
At $2 for regular naan and $4 for garlic naan. It's also a good deal.
Main Course
I got the paneer tikka masala, which is fantastic.
Instead of chicken, they put paneer cheese in it, which was delicious over rice.Thee ment says spice level three, but I put it at a one-and-a-half or two. The spice was there, but definitely manageable and not very intense. I don't think I even had a glass of water with dinner.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to taste the Sagg Panneer because they didn't include it in the order. That's my standard second item to accompany whatever entree I get, even at non-vegetarian Indian. My wife and I usually split it and have leftovers the next day.
But no leftovers for us this time because we only got four entrees when we ordered five.
Luckily, the portions were big, so the five of us could share the four entrees.
Gokul Indian Restaurant Atmosphere And Miscellaneous
There's no atmosphere because you have to get delivery on take out.
Besides the service just being shitty and the lady telling me that I was lying to her on the phone, the food was excellent.
If you're looking for Indian food in this part of Delmar, it's very good. Price-wise, it was $15 for a saag and $12 or $13 for the tikka masala. That's right in the standard price range for Indian food in St. Louis. If not on the low side.
All in, for the five of us, it was going to be $107, which seems about right, But…
MAKE SURE TO CHECK YOUR TAKEOUT BEFORE YOU LEAVE.
Or you'll get stiffed $15 + tax + tip worth of food.
Parking At Gokul Indian Restaurant
Parking is really easy. There's street parking on Delmar, the side street, and a dedicated lot with four or five spots for Gokul in the back. It's on the super-east side of Delmar near the Pageant and Delmar Hall.
Gokul Indian Restaurant Receipt
The Long Story
[1] - I ordered a 5:15 p.m. with a 6 p.m.pickup time which is fine. I knew it would be about half an hour to 45 minutes when I ordered.
The issue was I needed to go to the airport by 6:45, so I needed the food to be ready around 6.
I arrived at 5:55 p.m. and called. They said my order was late because they were having issues in the kitchen. I said that's fine. They said 10 minutes. I said great.
At 605, I called them again and asked if it was ready, and she said no, it'll be ten more minutes. I said okay, that's fine.
This whole time, I've been the only customer outside waiting for food.
605 plus 10 is 615. I called her again and asked if the food was ready, and she said something I couldn't hear.
Three minutes later, she comes out with the food. So, the food ended up being 18 minutes late.
Normally not the end of the world, but I have to be at the airport in 30 minutes now, which is exactly the time from the restaurant to home to the airport.
I literally thought to myself, "There's no way they are going to stiff me an entree. I don't have time to check. It will be ok."
It was not ok.
So I ran home to drop off the food, we counted the entrees, and there were only four.
Just generally stressed and frustrated at this point I call to tell her to reimburse me for a missing entree.
"I put 5 entrees in the bag."
"No you didn't."
"Yes I did."
"Lady, I'm staring at four entrees. You either reimburse me for 1, or I'm disputing the whole charge."
She agreed, and I hung up.
My wife looked at me like I was crazy.
It's the principle of the thing.
I ended up getting to the airport in time, so I emailed her the picture of the table above and apologized for yelling. She called me back and said she would reimburse the charge that night.
Three days later.
Still not reimbursed.
It's only ~$20 after tax and tip, but it's very frustrating because she shorted us one meal, she lied to me on the phone, she called me a liar, and said she would reimburse me, but she didn't.
Luckily, the samosas are pretty damn good.
