Rama's

Rama's is a (Fijian-)Indian restaurant in the Woden suburb of Pearce, set along with an Ethiopian and a Vietnamese place in an archetypal National Capital Development Commission concrete 1960s local centre.

Perhaps due to a perception of being a "hidden gem" given its somewhat out of the way location Rama's has quite a reputation - to the extent that reasonable people talk of it as being Canberra's best Indian joint. Correspondingly, every time we've been there it has been very full (and very noisy), with patrons stuffed into a large number of small booths in a not very large space.

So, how does it stack up in May 2008? Lest there be no mistake, we will say right now that Rama's is competent. However, while Rama's is OK, we would have to question the reputation of it being "The Best Indian in Canberra". Specifically, (along with the noise) the menu was rather unremarkable (i.e. it featured the standards, and only the standards of Indian restaurants in Australia), and the food, while fine, was not particularly memorable (with the possible exception of the Palak Paneer).

Costwise, meals were a couple of dollars more than you might expect for equivalent dishes in other Canberra Indian restaurants, but this was in part offset by generous servings of rice, complementary poppadoms, and no corkage charge. The service was also friendly, efficient, and generally excellent.

In sum, we would probably lean towards one of the Blue Elephant (Braddon), Flavours of India (Garema Place) or the Taj Mahal (Melbourne Building) if we were to make a judgement of "The Best Indian in Canberra" (if it were possible to be so unequivocal), but if you were to go to Rama's on a quiet night with a freshened menu, it would probably be comparable.