Mandovi Indian Cuisine

Had goat biryani here (spicy) and chicken biryani (medium spicy). The spices were perfect… taste was amazing. Ambience is awesome and the staff is welcoming and polite. The mint chutney served with papaad was fresh and very yummy. I am in love with the restaurant. It is also close to the airport. Next time when I come back to LA I ll come and eat biryani here again for sure.

Tried Mandovi tonight for the first time and all of the stellar reviews were right! The ambiance was quiet but nice, our server (Mitch) was very attentive and the food was amazing! Our party of 4 shared orders of samosas, «Chicken 65» and Gobi Manchurian for appetizers followed by Lamb Korma, Mandovi River Rava Fish Fry and Saag Paneer with saffron rice and garlic naan. Everything, and I mean everything, was fresh and bursting with flavor plus spicy without the heat overpowering the flavor. Great Indian food is hard to find so Mandovi will definitely be getting repeat business!

Absolute best! We were there in April and cant wait to go back… It will be a regular spot for us every time we visit! The kids fell in love too… Just brilliantly flavored food and great atmosphere coupled with excellent customer service! You will love this place too! Hugs!

This place has become a regular for me. Super polite and helpful staff, delicious food, great ambiance, and great parking. I’ve had saag paneer and it’s one of my favorite vegetarian plates. Paneer tikka masala is also delicious. Also the strawberry lassie is amazing!
It’s always so refreshing to see whole real spices in your food. All of their plates have real ingredients and you can notice it instantly in the flavor.

Since finding someone to go with me here has become a challenge, I decided to just go by myself! (None of my colleagues are fans of Indian food.)
Walked in aournd 1145am and only a few tables were occupied. I was gonna be seated next to the door, but I preferred to be away from it. Sat down at a 2-​seat table. Server asked what I wanted to drink. Asked for an Arnold Palmer.
I walked around the buffet to see what they had to offer. At first I was kind of annoyed that they weren’t labeled and I have no idea what I’m looking at. Little did I know, all I had to do was look up to see what they are. (Duh.) Yes, the labels are above the warmers.
I skipped the whole salad/​fruit part and went straight for the main course stuff. I got the rice (of course), the onion pakora, pappadam, butter chicken, chicken tandoori and the Mandovi goat curry.
The rice was rice, it’s what one can expect. The onion pakora was good. Not too greasy and full of flavor. The pappadam is ADDICTING!!! Oh, how I love crunchy things! The butter chicken was okay. It was tender, needed a bit of seasoning, I thought. The chicken tandoori was DRY. I have no idea if it’s because it’s been kept in a warmer too long, but it was very dry. Warning to those who get the goat curry — it has bones of various sizes. But understand this — it was deliberately made that way because the flavor comes off of its bones. (So be careful biting into the meat and avoid chipping a tooth.) The level of its curry fell a bit short. It was a little bland. Also, there was a lack of consistency with the meat — some were fall-​off-​the-​bone tender, others were a little tough.
Free naan bread included!
They were pretty efficient with cleaning up your table when you go for seconds and water was always refilled.
Sadly, I never got my Arnold Palmer. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as I was okay with just water.
The place was pretty packed by 1230pm. It’s a pretty popular spot.
Still not bad for $ 11.95 (plus tax and tip) = $ 15.
3.5 stars overall.

I’ve been to so many indian restaurants over the years, and to be honest it’s kind of hard to find a really bad one. Most are pretty decent and it can be hard to distinguish one from the rest. HOWEVER, Mandovi is a little different.
For starters, the service is incredible. Really. Being an irish guy in a spicy food restaurant means I pretty much constantly need water, so it’s rather impressive when my glass is constantly being refilled without me even asking. Also, the waiters are friendly and knowledgable about the dishes and the history behind them. The restaurant is also setup in a very classy manner, to the point where you almost feel like you should be dressing up to eat there (don’t worry, you don’t have to).
Second, and most importantly, is the food. It’s amazing. As in, the best indian I’ve EVER had. I love their Chicken 65 as an appetizer. It’s the perfect level of spiciness and is served on different kinds of veggies to cool your mouth off after each bite. Their naan bread is also baked to perfection. I prefer the basil pesto and garlic varieties. It’s just amazing.
And the entrees? Well, as you can guess by now, they’re incredible and very large. We’ve had the Zaffrani Chicken Tikka, Tandoori Chicken, Mandovi Shrimp Okra Curry (Goan), and the Butter Chicken to name a few. All delicious, all reasonably priced, and all brought out to us quickly.
They also have a lunch buffet that I’ve been meaning to try out, but until then I’m still very satisfied with the dinners I’ve enjoyed here so far. As far as I’m concerned, this is as good as indian food gets and I’ll be back again soon. Like, very soon.

Song Parody #559
Review 1,381
Unilocal 365 2016 Review #34
4.4 051 909 041 805 011 093 291 008 Stars
I came to Manjovi for a tasting event with Unilocalers. I enjoyed my experience here.
The hot dishes were very enjoyable, especially the potatos in curry, they had a certain magic to them.
The Naan had the crispy texture, nicely browned, which made a great compliment to the entrees.
The restaurant itself was rather pleasant, very sanitary and clean, cool temperate with a nice shade.
The buffet line was easy to read, you can see what you were getting.
Thank you to Unilocal for restoring my passion and love for Indian.
Song parody of The Ronnette’s 1964 song «Be My Baby»
The day I had your chutney, know that I loved you so
Long legged grains of rice, please jump in my bowl
So feed me at Manjovi
A curry dish with that heat
Please serve Tandori bread, everytime we go
So won’t you, please
(Be my, be my Desi) Be my tasty Desi
(My one and only Desi) Say you’ll be my darlin’
(Be my, be my Desi) Be my Desi now
Whoa-​oh-​oh-​oh-​oh
I will adore you gladly baby, and sing with glee
For all the Naan I tasted, I’m at your feet
Oh, since the day I saw you
My hunger, longing for you
The way that I adore you, give me that chick pea
So won’t you, please
(Be my, be my Desi) Be my tasty Desi
(My one and only Desi) Say you’ll be my darlin’
(Be my, be my Desi) Be my Desi now
Whoa-​oh-​oh-​oh-​oh
So come on and please
(Be my, be my Desi) Be my tasty Desi
(My one and only Desi) Say you’ll be my darlin’
(Be my, be my Desi) Be my Desi now
Oh-​oh-​oh-​oh-​o
(Be my, be my Desi) Be my tasty Desi
(My one and only Desi) Oh oh oh oh
(Be my, be my Desi) Oh
Oh-​oh-​oh-​oh

This was by far some of the best Indian food that my husband and I have had in the LA area! We will definitely be returning very soon! I would recommend this restaurant if you want authentic delicious food and great service!

Easy to overlook due to its location, but very good!
We came for dinner on a Saturday, and the place only had about 4 other tables filled. I sense that this restaurant is more of a hit during weekday lunches with the nearby office crowd. But that works for me — more space for us!
We got the butter chicken, chicken tikka masala, and some saffron rice. Everything was delicious and very flavorful. I’m not as sensitive to spice as some people, but I did find that the «mild» spice level was enough to give the dish some flavor — any more would have been too much for me. We also had some potato naan, which was addictive and really good with the sauce from our chicken.
I love that they have Indian desserts (beyond the usual mango or pistachio ice cream). We tried some gulab jamun and it was really good.
Service was friendly and attentive throughout our meal, and pricing was extremely reasonable. Plenty of parking.
Hope to be back soon!

Tried the lunch buffet. Quite good, and had an adequate number of vegetarian selections for a herbivore like myself.
Service was polite and prompt. The servers removed used dishes from our table as soon as we were done with them. The buffet area was also spotless and well-​maintained.
I would definitely return.

TL;DR They were unprofessional jerks who wasted our time and we left.
Long Version:
We get there and as they are about to seat us they ask if we are all getting the buffet. We say no, since their buffet has a very small selection. We want to get entrées. They have us wait for about seven minutes for no reason. They had plenty of room. When they finally sit us down we are left at the table with no menus or drinks for another round of waiting. We were informed before being seated that our food would take about 25 minutes. Then some other guy asks if he can seat us at another, identical table. We say sure, but now the food will take 40 minutes because they claimed a health inspector was in the kitchen and I guess they can’t cook when a health inspector is present? To me that sounds like they were hiding something. Kind of suspicious. After being treated so rudely we came to the conclusion that they just wanted people to order the buffet and had no interest in letting us order food. Seems strange to me… for a RESTAURANT! If you want to be a buffet style restaurant have some dang variety! We all ended up leaving after being treated like a bunch of idiots. How dare we order food at a restaurant?!? Ended up going to Togo’s next door, for another round of disappointment, but that’s a story for next-week’s installment of Disappointing Lunch Encounters Volume 1, featuring Franco and the Gang! Tune in next week to see what happens! On a serious note, on the off chance that they were actually telling the truth and we just happened to come at the absolute worst time, I am planning to return once and get to actually try the food to give a less biased review. If it was all bs and they just didn’t want to go through the hassle of cooking custom orders here’s a word of advice to the owners: if you just don’t want to cook entrées during the buffet hours, then just make it a policy to only have the buffet option during those hours, instead of annoying customers until they leave. That’s just bad for business.

I came here because I wanted to try something different in my area. I was greeted upon arrival and seated promptly. The interior was a nice and intimate. The waiters and servers took great care of me. When my food came out it smelled so good. As I began eating I realized that Indian food was a diamond in the rough and an amazing food to eat! OMG it tasted so amazing. The chicken masala was wonderful! I would recommend using the sauce from the chicken masala to put over the saffron rice and the Naan bread!
I will DEFINITELY be coming back to this place very soon!

I ate dinner here while traveling to El Segundo for work. On a whim; I saw a number of reviews saying what great food they had. The reviewers were right.
The food is based on cooking from the Indian providence of Goa. I had lamb vindaloo with garlic nan bread. Delicious. The waiters felt bad that I couldn’t decide on nan or rice. So they offered to bring me a cup of rice. A very nice gesture but I was already filling up. I then had their desert that was orange and tamarind ice cream served in orange slices. Don’t skip desert!
I’m planning on being back in three more weeks on travel. I like this place enough to take three other people there on my «dime». That should tell you how much I like it. PS — Very good wait staff made the meal even more pleasant. 5 starts.

Came here for lunch today, and I was pretty happy with my meal! 11.95 for all you can eat Indian food buffet with Naan!!! Was a pretty sweet deal :)
Customer service was pretty good too, very friendly!

A great spot for an indulgent work lunch since it’s a buffet. It’s nice that some of the reliable dishes like Chicken Tikka Masala or Chicken Tandori is always available but they also switch up the supporting cast regularly so they offer variety.
Go before the lunch crowd hits around noon or the place packs up.
Service has always been attentive and again, for a buffet lunch, it’s reasonably priced. Would definitely recommend.

Review ⁵⁄₃₆₅
I came here for lunch with some coworkers and had their lunch buffet. It was just okay. My biggest complaint would be the temperature of the food. I’m pretty sure food has to be kept at a certain temperature, especially with buffets. The currys and meats were very lukewarm. Flavor wise, it was all average. So… I didn’t really understand why the place was so crowded.
Anyways, I don’t think I’ll be back.

Amazing food! We came here eager to try the Goan cuisine we’ve read about in the LA Times.
This place was hoping with people. We came for dinner a little after 7pm on a Tuesday night and waited for a table for about 30 minutes. There was standing-​room only. We had the chance to observe that some people opted to not wait for a table, but instead they were eating standing-​around from the buffet. Wow! I was impressed to see the amount of people willing to eat standing-​up from the buffet.
At last we got our table and the host/​server were very nice, informative, amicable — well, all that you would want as a customer coming here for the first time.
We ordered the appetizer salad: Miramar Sev Papdi Chaat. We had read that it was suppose to be a «street food temptation» — so we were immediately intrigued and ordered it. It was a little spicy — but not too much. I loved that it had texture and not purée, like so many of the indian dishes.
For the main courses we ordered the Mandovi Mix Grill which included an assortment of Chicken, shrimp and lamb. It was beautifully presented. The Shrimp was my favorite. My husband ordered the Gallina Chicken Cafrel which which was equally delicious.
The bread basket included Garlic naan, plain naan and Aloo paratha naan.
To finish-​off our meal we ordered the only Goan dessert they had in their menu: Goan Bibinca. It just the right size (sweet bite) at the end of a fabulous meal.
I will definitively be back to try some of their other dishes.

You come here for the lunch time buffet and you like it!
To be honest, I like Bombay Tandoori in South Torrance better — this restaurant I would say is setting the par for the local area *El Segundo.
Service was great — mango lassi was great, all the food was well cooked and good flavor. Can be argued that there is a bit lack of selection — We got some fresh naan; like way too hot fresh out of the fire fresh, which is good!

I hate to be a party pooper here especially with so many great reviews. My experience dining here was sub par (especially having been at so many Indian restaurants in the area).
We went on a saturday for dinner (right at 5pm when they opened).
We were the only ones there but the food took 1 hour before it was ready. The service was good, the waiters were on point and explained the dishes. However because such care was taken to explain how great the dishes are and where they’re from, we were expecting out of this world dishes.
We ordered the Spicy Goat dish, Chicken 65, Saag Paneer (sautéed spinach and cheese), Saffron rice and Mango Lassi.
My favorites were of course Mango Lassi and Chicken 65 but I’ve had similar dishes elsewhere that are just as good. The Saag Paneer and Spicy Goat dishes were just ok.
Our bill came close to $ 60 for 2 people. I just can’t justify average tasting food for this amount of money when I can order something just as good if not better for cheaper elsewhere.
Overall the wait time to get the food was too long, the food was average and on the pricier side.

Tried their buffet early this week. The owner of the place reached out to me on my last review and said that he will revisit his buffet options. Went back after a few months and buffet options are changed they have their house special chicken biriyani in the buffet and also bhel poori as starters.
The biriyani was goo and the naan was fresh. The service by the staff was pleasant. Weekday buffet was 11.50 and is worth it.
Will go back again. Good and fresh indian food options. Hope they will stay that way for long term