We came to Basmati for the second time after having an amazing dinner here last summer. The owner and his staff are so friendly and welcoming. The food is delicious and made so easy from start to finish. As a vegetarian, I am offered as...many options as non-vegetarians. Highly recommend this gem!More

Wow ! I didn’t expect such a great meal. I didn’t really want an ‘Indian’ whilst in Madeira but my partner was hankering for a curry so I succumbed and I’m so glad I did ! I had the house special‘mono’ Go for it -it’s...gorgeousMore

We went to Basmati restaurant after mistakenly believing all the hype on tripadvisor surrounding this restaurant - it still baffles me why it has rave reviews - is it just dumb luck or what? We walked in to Mr Shahin, the chef, warmly greeting us...and guiding us to our table. All seemed well, the decor was nice but the rooms are a little dark even during the day. It was empty and the vibe was more Addams family creepy than romantic. The chef fancies himself as a bit of a celebrity - constantly hovering at our table to boast about his life’s achievements, telling us this “surprise menu” concept was something unique to his restaurant, that we’ll never have tasted anything like his food - he didn’t clarify which cuisine it was and blanket labelled it as Indian - Indian cuisine is regional as is any cuisine - it varies by geographical location. The appetisers were deep fried onion and potato fritters or pakoras with a selection of stale chutneys. Honestly, as I make these myself at home and have eaten these in restaurants around the world, these were days old. They were not freshly fried. Not a chance. They were slightly burnt and unevenly heated like they had been microwaved. When leaving the restaurant this suspicion was confirmed as the kitchen is visible from reception and the guy preparing the food had no mask nor gloves and microwaved a large plate of fritters while stuffing a couple in his mouth!!! Unacceptable for a restaurant of this “Calibre” to serve old food reheated like this - it’s straight out fraud. Especially during covid where the food is being prepared by hand while the guy is eating at the same time and wearing no mask! Mr Shahin mentioned that the chicken tandoori he was serving wasn’t going to be red but orange/green - hence a different dish masquerading as tandoori. I’m fine with that I’m pretty open minded and can totally appreciate fusion food - call a rose by any other name and it will smell just as sweet but in this case the chicken was actually raw. I was shocked as the price tag per head is 40 Euros and at first when he saw my son who is 14 he said he’d eat half price. But when the bill came it was 120 Euros for 3 people!! How can you serve raw chicken that oozes blood and charge 40Euros per head??? Unforgivable for an establishment with this many positive reviews and has been running for this long. I left it and we moved onto mains. Each course was accompanied with an awkward self glorifying story from the chef. How he left his home country at age 14, then opened his first restaurant in some obscure European town at age 16, then closed it down to go to Japan to train under chefs for “discipline”. Then came to Majorca in the 90s to open Basmati and became a world renown celebrity chef. The narcissism reeked to high heaven! And false modesty? Check - he went on to say he didn’t care much for money, how he wants to be closer to family back home and is planning to close this restaurant and go back home so he can leave the high life of a celebrity behind - apparently which involves a lot of bungee jumping and extreme sports. All this life story - not just when the food was being prepared but also while he brought it to us to get stone cold while he kept going on and on about himself. The main course looked better than the first two, but was completely bland and tasteless set of curries - chicken, lamb and venison. This guy really knows exactly what he’s doing as he mentioned “ im not sure how spicy you guys like it so it’s a little mild”. He also mentioned that the mango chutney he made was extremely spicy so we could use that with the curries. That’s probably the only true words that came out of him - mango chutney was indeed eye wateringly spicy. He knew we were Asians and used to rich flavourful Indian cuisine both in and out of our homes so he already put this disclaimer forward. For the one other table that had a customer, lengthy stories and backgrounds were given to the dishes to hype up the food as something special and authentic. Even though these dishes don’t actually exist and especially presented like they were - all curries had raw veg as garnish - not something authentic at all. Cucumber and bell peppers are not garnish for curry. The lumps of stewed meat in the thin watery curry seemed quite old and reheated. The naans were raw - and also another invention of the chef with coconut and raisins inside so that the dough didn’t cook properly and it was a doughy mess. Later in the evening, after leaving the restaurant, I was violently sick, with stomach cramping, vomiting, cold sweats and diarrhoea. Luckily I recovered with medical attention and rest, who knows what kind of bug caused my food poisoning? Mr Shahin needs to get out more and get a reality check. He is not Gordon Ramsay so he should really stop behaving like he is. There aren’t that many competitors in Palma that are serving the type of concept that Mr Shahin has basically failed at. This kind of monopoly has a way to warp minds and this chef is deluded that he’s doing everyone a favour by serving reheated obscurely identified stale food masquerading as Indian cuisine and the nature of his touristy customers means they sometimes don’t know what authentic food is and no comparison and only go once for their trip and that’s it. Avoid like the plaque.More