Karma – The Indian Bistro

Noticed they are now CLOSED!

I am really at a loss as to how to rate and review this place. When their food is on point, it’s AMAZING. But lately, it’s been hit or miss in terms of both quality and service.
I generally order three dishes here — the veggie pakora, beef mishkaki, and butter chicken. The pakora are always delicious, and the tamarind sauce served with them is so flavourful!
The mishkaki, when good, is tender and beautifully spiced. When it’s bad, though, it’s tough and spicy but not flavourful. Also, the portion size of this dish varies wildly between visits. The last two times I have visited, the portion size was about 50% of what it used to be, which is so disappointing at around $ 15 per order.
The butter chicken is always tender, and uses breast meat, which I vastly prefer to other restaurants’ use of less premium meat. However, the flavour profile varies between visits — sometimes it’s delicious, sometimes it’s just OK.
I hope that whatever is behind the inconstancy at Karma is resolved, because they can produce the best Indian food I’ve had in Edmonton, when they’re on game. However, lately it seems that each visit is a round of culinary Russian roulette — the experience depends on who is in the kitchen, I guess.
Try it — and hope that it’s an «on» night!

One of the things about this restaurant is that I visit semi-​frequently and I tend to have the same dish over and over again. And the last few times I’ve noticed that the food hasn’t been very consistent — the dish I order can vary in consistency, color, flavor and ingredients from one week to the next! Sometimes it is great, sometimes it is terrible. Sometimes it takes forever and sometimes it’s very fast.
Also, I don’t know why, but one thing that IS consistent is the fact that the plates never seem to be clean. The last three times I’ve visited (I’ve been counting), at least one plate at my table has had some sort of food residue on it. Last night 3 plates that were given to us had ‘leftovers’ on them. Very unappealing!

Frozen carrots in the Vegetable Jalfarezi? Really?
I’m pretty sure something has changed over at Karma. We’ve ordered takeout a few times, as we just live around the corner. Frozen vegetables have a very distinct taste, and boy did we pick up on it right away last night.
Quite disappointed, as normally everything is really good. For $ 64 bucks ($ 50 dinner for four, $ 4 delivery, plus $ 10 tip), we’ve had better. I also had to teach the delivery guy how to use the debit machine, which helped make the food even less-​warm than it was.
Sorry guys. Just can’t let this one go. Hoping it’s just a smudge on your usually good reputation.

Karma is a good restaurant located in a quiet area near downtown. The ambience is a little upscale but not too bad for the kind of place it’s trying to be.
A delicious list of menu items, ranging from appetizers, to grilled meat and curries, rice and bread; sure gives an inviting and salivating start to a spicy evening. Most of their dishes a prepared with medium spice, which I surely appreciate about this Indian restuarant. I’m quite bored of Indian restaurants focussing a lot on the «spicy» angle to its food; knowing somewhere, that people don’t necessarily eat downright crazy spicy, back in India.
Although I really liked many of the items on the menu (was in a group, so got to try plenty), I was a little disappointed with one of them — the vegetable jalfrezi. Now most meat eaters think that meat is everything, but as one, myself, I do get disappointed when a vegetarian dish is made so poorly. The vegetables used were pretty much just a pack of frozen, mixed veggies which really doesn’t fit the match of a jalfrezi.
Apart from that, the appetizers were great and the butter chicken fairly succulent. A well made meat curry dish should have really soft meat in it and in that sense, it’s a little lacking — but given the other choices I’ve come across, it’s not surprising.
A full bar of drinks is available and decent wine list although, I really don’t know how to pair wines with spicy entrées. In any case, Karma is a complete restaurant with a great menu and decent food. Do try it!

I was really disappointed with this place. The décor is great but the food was okay and the service was terribly slow. They have a good wine and beer list but most of the beers were not available when I was there. The server was not very helpful with the selection process and the tables were not cleared. They pride their butter chicken but I was so disappointed. When we ordered the naan, the idea was to bring them gradually as we finished them. Instead the first time we waited in between meals and the second time there was a pile of them. I didnt have very high expectations but I was still disappointed. There are other places with better food in Edmonton…

This place is really good. The food is awesome, and the service is very friendly.
My friend and I had a groupon so we splurged a little on dinner. We ordered the vegetarian couple’s dinner which came with the veggie appetizer share plate, 2 main dishes, rice, naan, 2 desserts, plus coffee or chai after the meal. Holy hell that was a lot of food. My friend will be eating the rest for lunches this week. We had the eggplant dish and the cauliflower dish, which were both fabulous. The appies were all delicious, too. The homemade ice cream is truly exceptional. I’ve never tasted anything like it, and definitely worth saving room for. It’s a small portion, but you’ll be so full from dinner anyways. We also tried the rice pudding which was good, though not the best ever. They were unfortunately out of the carrot pudding, which I wanted to try.
They have an extensive wine list, and some signature cocktails, too. We tried two of the signature cocktails. One with raspberries and one with mango and ginger. Both were very tasty and large. I didn’t taste any booze in them, despite being 1.5 oz., but that’s probably because the whole drink was so big. Tasty for sure, freshly made and refreshing, though I think next time I will try something else.
Service was a little bit slow, and it took a long time to get our plates cleared away and food packed up even though the other tables were all being taken care of. That was really my only complaint. For the most part our server was really good.
The restaurant is nicely laid out and has a warm, inviting feel to it. However, the bathroom was really cold. It’s a good place for a date or to share a bunch of plates with friends. I will for sure come back next time I am in town.

Some of the best Indian food Ive had in downtown Edmonton! They deliver too and in pretty containers and a reusable cloth bag. On the recommendation of the person that took my phone order I ordered the Chicken Curry instead of my usual Butter Chicken standby and Im glad I listened! It was delicious, the beef curry was delicious and the plain and garlic naan were equally yummy!!! I’ll for sure order from them again.