Amaya Express

Was looking for somewhere to eat on this street and after leaving my phone number with a few other restaurants I smelt this place in the air and hunted around until I found it. I came back the next night and was a little worried as there were no customers inside. It smelt so good that despite the lack of a crowd I decided to roll the dice.
I ordered butter chicken and beef vindaloo to go.
After getting home I was blown away by how good both dishes were. The butter chicken tasted like it’s suppose to and the vindaloo burnt my Caucasian palate appropriately.
The meat was well cooked in large chucks and not shitty cuts (no fat or gristle).
It is a little bit more expensive than your typical hole in the wall ($ 33 for 2 meat dishes + rice) but considering the taste and I didn’t have to get aquatinted with the bathroom multiple times the next day, I’d do it again.

My husband and I work very specific hours, and we try to plan ahead if we need to order take-​out — how long is it going to take, when is it going to arrive between our shifts if I have a night shift. This place has such crazy delivery it’s hard to predict. Sometimes it arrives in 20 minutes, sometimes it takes literally over two hours. I know they can get swamped, but they should give a heads up when you call to order.
The food is okay. It’s about on par for how much Indian costs, and it tastes okay. The samosas are pretty good, especially the day after, but I guess most Indian food tastes pretty good the next day.

The first thing you should know about food from Amaya is that it all looks the same — see photo. Every dish we ordered, without exception, was the same colour and consistency — orange goo. Based on the menu descriptions, we were hoping for three distinct vegetarian dishes, however it appears that there was a special on orange goo sauce, as it was added to every dish. In the entrée advertised as «braised baby root vegetables,» there was nary a root vegetable in sight, other than some sad-​looking carrot slices; peppers and broccoli are not «root vegetables» in my dictionary.
The eggplant dish that we ordered actually did have eggplant — a few pieces floating in the aforementioned orange goo. Remarkably, it did taste — a bit — of the promised tamarind. Still very gooey.
We ordered brown basmati rice and instead received some other sort of rice which was short-​grained and clumpy — definitely not basmati. The naan was quite thick and doughy. No orange goo to report here, at least. The raita and pickles were sub-​par.
Did I also mention the small pieces of shredded aluminum foil that I almost accidentally ate? Somehow they made it into one of the main dishes, camouflaged by – you guessed it – orange goo.
Of course, it wouldn’t be fair to be entirely negative about Amaya Express. To their credit, the delivery actually arrived early, and on New Year’s Eve, no less! Still, the food strongly resembles vomit; we won’t be ordering from here again.

They told us we had 20 mins to order because they were closing. We ordered. Food didn’t arrive until 30 ish mins later because they were tending to the take out orders. We sat there for a very long time… hungry. It was after we got our food that the waitress gave us the rushing vibe. I know they were aware that they were taking a really long time to give us our food, so why not give us some naan bread to help make the wait a little easier? Customer service really lacks here. If you’re here I’d recommend going to another restaurant that’s nearby.

This place is dangerously near my new digs and they deliver. Actually, maybe it’s not so dangerous since they’re so close, as I’ll be embarrassed to have them deliver since it’d be kind of pathetic of me. Or maybe I’ll be OK with it in a pinch? Maybe I’ll fake a limp? OK, these things should have stayed in my head.
Ooof. What you really want to know about is the food, not my neurotic relationship with delivery, so here goes…
It’s the cleanest and freshest Indian food I’ve had in Toronto at this price point! Mutter paneer, chicken vindaloo and achar with basmati rice and garlic naan all made it to my door in a timely manner. Their online menu is huge, but they didn’t have the paneer I wanted listed but when I asked for mutter instead of saag they didn’t even note it not being on the menu. When it comes to delicious Indian, at Amaya if you can dream it they can do it. Yes, it’s so good I’m writing in clichés.

A gluten free delight for all of those who like Indian fare the staff is kind, warm & helpful with suggestions regarding their menu. The atmosphere is relaxing as it’s never too busy but busy enough to know that the food is good & people are enjoying their meals.
I highly suggest for anyone looking to eat done delicious Indian food to head down to any location and try something. You will never know how good tell your taste buds tell you otherwise.

Quite good! Not the absolute best in the city by any means, but still good.
It’s particularly awesome if you’re celiac, as the menu is super gluten-​free friendly and the staff actually knows what ‘gluten’ means, which is delightful. It’s also nice to be actually able to eat fried stuff — pakoras are usually a no go from cross contamination, but not here!
Portions are pretty insane (at least they are if you eat in), one curry + one rice was more than enough for two hungry people.
Their mango lassis are actually mangoey (not the milky over-​sugary blasphemies you find at other places). It seems like they add a little rosewater too, which is a nice detail.
Service was really fast and attentive, but not annoyingly-​so.

This place is AWESOME. And I was only two pints in.
My girlfriend and I stumbled in here a couple nights ago. We shared a veg samosa app, a tofu and veg jungle curry, some rice and naans. The whole bill came to under $ 20! And we couldn’t finish the food. Their portions are definitely family size.
But also honestly, and this is coming from a Pakistani person —
Some of the freshest and best Indian food I have ever had! All of the veggies were perfectly seasoned, nothing was overcooked, not too oily, veggies were clearly fresh. And I enjoyed how they took some liberty with the flavour profile. It was different from what I’m used to, but not in a Canadianized, bastardized, dumbed down kind of way. In an innovative, intelligent kind of way.
There’s pseudo table service, but this is definitely a take-​out joint. Even so, the lady who took our order provided some great suggestions. Plus, the food was at our table before we could say «curry».

I’m impressed! I’ve found it hard to get good Indian food in Toronto (which makes no sense!) — previously I would have rated Banjara on Bloor as Toronto’s best Indian restaurant. But since moving to my new digs near Ossington I’ve been doing takeout at Amaya. The flavours are excellent and things taste like excellent home made food. Try the chutneys and pickles that come with the poppadoms and you’ll see what I mean. Their sweet and sour eggplant sounds strange (sweet and sour?!) but is outstanding! The My only complaint is that if you eat in you’ll end up smelling smokey like the kitchen — they need better extractor fans.

I am very picky about my indian food so I may be a harder critic than most. Food is slightly better than okay. Delivery was quick but the food was lukewarm when delivered, saag panner was a bright green which I have not seen before in a food dish. Not bad for the price and they deliver which is a huge plus for Indian food.

We used
to order food from Amaya Express. Being Indian in Toronto, we’re usually very skeptical about ordering-​in Indian food. But being lazy and craving Indian food on a Friday night, we ordered from Amaya Express, and it was delicious!!! I would even go as far as naming Amaya it the «Best Indian Restaurant in Toronto».
We ordered the ‘Mixed Grill for two’ as appetizers. which included kabab, chicken, and prawn — all were scrumptious (and goes really well with scotch & soda — if you’re Indian, you know what I’m talking about — ‘short eats’!) The meats all retained their moisture, and weren’t dry at all on delivery.
We also ordered the Madras Curry Braised Lamb — which was super-​flavorful, savory, had just the right amount of spice, and the lamb piece was amazingly tender! We had it with the garlic naan (not overly garlicy, just right, and still warm). Thinking we hadn’t ordered enough, we also got the Chicken Biryani — that was a bit of an overload, as we were just too stuffed to eat anymore. The Biryani was good, although the cardamon aroma was a bit over-​powering. Nevertheless, our whole in-​house dining experience was great — and we’re hoping to order from Amaya every week (they even gave us a $ 15 coupon on our next order) — thank you Amaya!

I also picked up some takeout for dinner. i guess everyone does cause there was no one sitting and eating. A fair amount of takeout orders it seems, must be good to have justeat website.
For a place that is said to be ‘express’, well they were quite quick. i went in, ordered, was out of there in short order. But the other aspect I had hoped was a slightly lower price point given it’s a takeout fast food type. I really couldn’t get out of there with dinner for 2 for under $ 40.
The food though is quite good. I had the spinach curry (saag) with chicken which was a good size portion. Chicken pieces you could tell just added, as it didn’t have too much flavor.
I liked watching the cook make the naan though, was a really cool process. He takes a small piece of dough, stretches and flips it back and forth kindaa like pizza. Then he put it on some tool to stick to the side of this naan oven.
They also have pakoras, but it wasn’t on the menu. I’m no expert on Indian cuisine, but for my non-​expert taste I quite liked them as an appetizer.
The place though seems very sterile, clean to eat in but not very warm and welcoming. I guess they’re going for the order, eat, leave thing.

We got takeout, dinner for two. We’re new to the city and received the menu, which was very professional and seemed promising, in the mail. The best thing I can say is that it was hot. However… the pakoras were terrible — the onion was not cooked properly and the batter had an eggy consistency. They messed up our first dish, which was supposed to be fish in madras curry. Instead we received shrimp in some curry. The first thing I noticed was that it smelled like garbage. Upon further inspection I realized that the shrimp were rancid. The vegetarian dish was mediocre at best, the flavour resembled chef boyardee — sweet tomato sauce. There was no heat at all. The lamb dish was OK, the sauce was fine but the lamb was not great. The only thing that was actually good was the rice — fluffy and mixed with cumin seeds, and the naan was not shabby — not burned like other Indian restaurants.
We did go back the next day to return the rancid shrimp and they offered us a full refund, so at least they were polite about it. Too bad the food wasn’t good — shape up, Amaya Express!