Wow - I'm baffled that a 5-star review precedes mine. I love patronizing the restaurants in my neighborhood and write bad reviews somewhat reluctantly; in this case, however, I feel compelled to be honest.
We gave Shiva a second chance recently, still clinging to hope that the closest Indian restaurant to our apartment might be tolerable; unfortunately, it wasn't. I will say, this place is inexplicably busy and we showed up without a reservation. Despite there being several open tables, however, we were told to wait in the back of the (small, dark, crowded) room near the "bar" at an empty table. We waited 10 minutes or more, during which two other parties entered the restaurant; a group of five and another party of two. Somehow the host / owner / server couldn't clearly remember that we had arrived first, and was oblivious to our gentle reminders, so we were seated second - after the group of five - at a tiny cramped table by the door. Shiva's decor can only be described as tacky, outdated, and not particularly clean; our server wiped crumbs from our table onto the bench and then gestured for me to sit. The space reminds me of many London pubs - very dimly lit for a reason - with a twist of tacky LED art and rotating laser light machines.
It was ages before our orders were taken, ages before the food arrived (and disappointed us) and again, ages before we could pay. We were happy, hungry, and ready to stuff ourselves - but hadn't planned to spend our entire evening languishing in a corner. The man who'd eventually seated us seemed distracted and disorganized, often stopping at several tables before reaching us & then disappearing into the kitchen for minutes at a time. The second server working the room appeared so deeply bummed out about being at Shiva we may have absorbed some of her bad vibes; she was actually sighing deeply and frowning the entire time.
Our "starter" consisted of 4 tiny slices of fried veg (we think Eggplant and Zucchini, but it was really too dark to tell) sprinkled with limp shreds of what looked and tasted like wilted salad mix from a bag - for a whopping 4.90 EUR. We'd planned to split it, so were laughing ruefully to ourselves as we each enjoyed 2 soggy pieces. Our Papadum was overdone, flavorless and TINY for the price, the sauces were quite standard. Our Naan was burned, stale-tasting and incredibly thin; miles from the fluffy, warm naan we'd looked forward to. Our Mango Lassi's tasted like soap and sugar.
Our curries were fine - although we weren't given enough rice to share & were never able to recapture the attention of either of our servers. Both dishes were definitely small for the price, and insanely expensive for the quality. I'm still just stunned that this place has so many good reviews - have we just hit it twice on terrible nights?
Sadly we won't give it a third try to find out; its proximity to our apartment can't make up for abysmal service, pathetic starters & sides and confusingly high prices.
So, I'm sorry to say, there's too much great Indian food in Munich to have an experience like this. Unless you love weird green laser disco lights flashing across your face in a dark room while you wait in vain for a server to notice you, skip Shiva and enjoy one of the better local spots. read more