Paddy Rawal’s Mumbai

Closed as of late August 2012.

Smelled great, were seated immediately, After asking to place our order 4 times in 10 minutes, we left. Would like to have tried the food!

I’ve been here three times and had their buffet each time. It’s better than Sindhus in Hanna Plaza and possibly the best Indian in the greater Lansing area. The servers are attentive and interested in making sure you are satisfied.

Pros — The food and atmosphere are simply to die for. I have never once eaten anything there that was even average, much less bad. Everything is incredibly flavorful & rich. Also, the owner is very friendly & makes an effort to get to know his regular customers, which is nice — even when I’ve walked in there months after the last time I visited, he’s always recognized me and treated me like an old friend.
Cons — When they’re busy, the service is pretty unfortunate. I’ve waited there two hours before my food came, just because things were so hectic. It was worth it, but still was a little frustrating. Also, their delivery service is pretty poor — the one time I used delivery, I waited well over an hour when I was only a couple blocks away (and unable to pick up the meal myself, or I certainly would have :/​).
The other issue that I (and at least three other female friends of mine) have had involves one particular staff member, an older bald man who goes by the name of Sam. He is not shy about sexually harassing young women (touching their hair, demanding to go out for drinks, etc.), and woe be upon you if you’re a young woman by yourself, as he will NOT leave you alone — and I don’t mean he comes around to fill your water glass. I actually stopped going there for about 8 – 9 months because of one serious incident. If they got rid of him, I’d probably be there every single day, but as it is I’m afraid to do anything but takeout because he makes me feel so uncomfortable. It’s really unfortunate, because the food is so divine.

Paddy Rawal is a super friendly guy. He’s pretty much awesome and if I lived closer I’d get to know him better. I’m sure he has some very interesting and crazy stories.
Lunch buffet was good. Plenty of veggie options, fresh naan, etc.
Definitely worth a try.

I loved this place– the food was so tasty! We went for the lunch buffet and were really impressed. It was so nice to try a lot of stuff that I wasn’t very familiar with.
I am vegetarian, and there were a ton of options. They even had mango icecream for dessert. So good.
The atmosphere is a bit weird. It looks like they are trying to be fancy, but missed the mark. The food makes up for the look of the place. I can’t wait to go back!

This place is awesome, the chef Paddy Rawal is there on most days and provides a very personal touch to the dining experience. I would strongly recommend the Konkanese Shrimp Curry, Surmai Kofta and the Adraki Bhindi. I order from this place at least once a week.
They also deliver in the East Lansing/​Okemos and downtown lansing area. The staff is friendly and I have had a couple large group dinners for my team at this place that have turned out very well.

Yum Yum tasty tasty. This restaurant is now called «Mumbi» and they offer a full menu as well as a lunch buffet. They close for a few hours in the afternoon before the dinner hour.
We tried the lunch buffet. As other reviewers have mentioned is it reasonably priced and provided a good selection of Indian entrees. My guest for our lunch outing was my Mom, and it was her first encounter with Indian cuisine.
I’ve managed to enjoy quite a few quality Indian restaurants in the Ann Arbor/​Ypsilanti area and the lunch buffet at Mumbi was competitive. They offered a tasty soup, several vegetarian dishes, curried vegetables, curried chicken, and a tasty dessert.
I’m really looking forward to heading again to try their dinner menu.

Disappointing.
It might be better since it became Mumbai, formerly billed as the India Palace, but dang if that means pretty little in the long term.
Their paneer pakoras were pretty bad — in fact I’m not sure how they manage to create deep-​fried fritters where you can still see the individual pieces of cheese inside the batter, unless they were still frozen when they went into the fryer in the first place, which is my guess.
Their entrees are pretty weak as well. They’re not terrible, but they are nothing mindblowing either. Don’t bother trying to talk about heat either, everything seems toned down for inexperienced palates. Not that it’ll stop the waitstaff from making remarks about it if you happen to have a runny nose or bite into a cardamom pod unexpectedly.
One evening recently, I stopped in and they featured a live blues musician. While I like some blues music, it seemed like a really questionable entertainment choice, and I got the impression that it was a friend of a friend of the owner, and somebody was doing someone a favor. I’m unclear whether that’s a common thing, but it just doesn’t really suit the atmosphere at all.
Speaking of the owner, he seems to be there pretty frequently and is a friendly guy, and despite a few misunderstandings when it comes to heat, the waitstaff is pretty decent.
Ultimately however, Mumbai is just not great. It’s certainly not worth traveling for, and if I’m in town there are far better places to stop into than this.

The ambiance of this place is so Michigan it hurts. Being Michigan-​born, I have to say, I absolutely love it… it brings me back to my roots. Very high ceilings, nice place settings that look a little too formal for the industrial look of the building it is in… big tall windows looking out, under an overhang, on a tall, dark, modern hotel building. Sleek, modern, cozy in a snowy winter or a stormy summer night, and yet making you feel very small and somehow distant from your surroundings.
My friend and I both ordered vegetarian food. We ordered the okra dish, and a saag dish with cheese.
I have to say, if you like okra, ORDER THE OKRA HERE. The okra dish here was absolutely the best I’ve had it. It was exquisite… really otherworldly. Among the best food I’ve ever had. This alone (and the fact that the other dish here was decent) bumps the food up to five stars. But I will say that the saag dish was good, but not equally good.
Service was also very good. And like I said, I love the atmosphere… high ceilings, spacious, dark, a bit industrial, an odd sort of charm, and vaguely formal in that Michigan sort of way that makes you feel equally comfortable whether you’re dressed up or wearing work clothes.

The food was okay. Waiters were courteous and great about refilling water glasses. The problem was the chef/​proprietor who kept coming around and trying to be charming by calling us beautiful ladies, etc. Dude tried WAY too hard and just ended up being creepy and annoying. Leave me alone when I want to eat my food!