Mallu Cafe & Catering

Indian food is way beyond the regular butter chicken and naan variety. Mallu cafe has Malyalee food. From the state of "Kerala"- gods own country. They have an unpretentious interior but great food. Btw. When you talk of indian spices. 90% of those spices come from Kerala. So have your taste buds on a roller coaster journey thru the culinary delights of Mallu food. This place never disappoints. Althow it is mainly catering to catering. The food is amazing. Try the Kerala chicken curry or the chicken Varutharacha curry. Loved the Kerala Porotta. The Kerala bread/ or the Appam.

Mallu's latest health inspection report shows multiple violations, including for insects and rodents (click the photo or look up Mallu at Philadelphia's Office of Food Protection, Safety Inspection Reports). This report proves that Mallu's hygiene leaves a lot to be desired. Mallu's food itself was obviously previously cooked and then reheated, including the rice, beef, chicken, and mutton. The food tasted terrible as a result. My family and I were very disappointed.The restaurant was bare bones, tiny, dark, unclean, and smelly. The employees were very polite and prices reasonable for the amount of food received. But the positives did not come close to offsetting the awful tasting food. There is no private parking, so you will need to park on busy, crowded Veree Road. There are several excellent Indian restaurants in Philadelphia but Mallu ain't one of them. I am a REAL consumer trying to help other real consumers. This is a 100% truthful review, so please do not delete it!

Mallu Cafe on Verree just off Bustleton in far Northeast Philly is really a take out Indian joint, with a few tables for those who don't mind the run down decor or aren't aware of the business model employed (like me). Their website was interesting, and showed nice photos of many of their Kerala dishes. Perhaps, I should have been deterred by the sketchy dudes hanging by the front door (even more of them when we left), but they smiled when we approached and invited us in. Strange, but no big deal.We ordered Chicken 65 (spicy chili fried), Avial (mixed veggie coconut curry) and Appam (rice flour fry bread). They arrived in take out containers with plastic forks (?!). The chicken had been deep fried to a very dark brown and delivered without any sauce. Obviously, overcooked by someone who didn't know their own recipe, or hadn't looked at their website, as I had. I returned it to the kitchen. I wanted it done the right way, but that wasn't offered. Rather, they wanted to give us Kerala Chicken Curry. Okay. Whatever.While we waited we sampled the veggie dish. It was cool on top and hot at the base. Microwaved, and no one bothered to see if it was fully recooked. Nope. Further, it didn't look like the pics on the website, either. Rather than having distinct veggies, it was all mashed together. Didn't change the decent taste, but the presentation was lacking. When the replacement curry arrived we quickly saw that it was bone in small pieces. Hard to deal with only a plastic fork. The flavor was fine, but with the morsels to contend with it was not worth the effort. It was hard to understand why they would give us the bones, when boneless was only a buck more. Besides, they never asked which we would prefer. No. My sense was they were annoyed about their earlier mistake with the 65, knew they could not charge us for that, and decided to throw some shade at us by literally boning us. We surrendered, asked for the check, and definitely did not want to take anything home. When we left there were more dudes just hanging around outside. Maybe they were waiting for us to leave so they could start their pinochle game. Mallu Cafe just didn't seem to be a restaurant anymore. There are plenty of good Indian houses in this part of the city. This place just isn't one of them. 1 Star - Avoid

Lousy food. Do not go there. Not worth it at all. I paid for a Onam meal for 5 people - that includes about 21 side dishes; came home to find only 13, a few were doubles. Even after I drove back 30 min to get the remaining stuff, they only gave me 4 of the missing dishes. They said they were out of 2. And the portions were pathetic (picture included). All this when I reserved this 3 days in advance. Horrible food and customer service, do not go there. There are better places to eat better Indian food.

My only regret with this place is that it's so far from center city. I keep going back whenever I go to Philadelphia Mills for shopping. While this is a long overdue review, I'll talk about my most recent order. Did takeout from here because that's what we always do. Ordered the vegetable biryani, beef ulathiyathu and chicken 65. Portions are HUGE. 4 of us ate from the biryani and we still had leftovers. Beef Ulathiyathu is my most favorite dish so far. The coconut and curry leaves just make it so delicious. Chicken 65 was a bit dry and chewy but again good.There's a lot of stuff that I still want to try so I will keep going back.

It is beyond rare for me to one-star an establishment but in my opinion and for good reasons, I don't feel Mallu Café deserves any more. I was taking a friend who had just traveled to India out to lunch and I suggested an Indian restaurant serving the food from Kerala as a change of pace. That restaurant would be Mallu Café. It is located in a totally non-descript small shopping center in northeast Philly. We walked in to no greeting and when I asked about a table was just given a hand signal to take a seat. The table top in this no-frills eatery could have used a nice wipe down as there were def a couple large grease spots. And the restaurant was really cold so we kept out coats on. We ordered and the food came out quickly - def just heated up or micro-waved. We were given a plastic plate and a plastic fork. When I asked for a knife and a serving spoon, I was told "only forks." I asked what did they have to drink and was told only bottled water. So water it was.Now unfortunately the food was nothing extra - indeed my friend didn't care for it at all. The beef patties were very dry, the Varutharacha chicken curry had more bones than meat, the beef Ulathiyathu had a little too much gristle and where were the peppers and onions? Only the Kappa (yucca) seemed in line with past Keralite meals.We kinda just wanted to leave and I asked for the check, glanced at it, and then just paid ... including a tip. (Why?) At the car my friend said you seemed to have paid a lot for our meals - did you get overcharged? I said, I think I did and got the menu I took along with me. I added everything up (including the bottled water), then factored in tax, and realized we were charged too much for the food we didn't even like and service, heat, amenities which were bare minimum. I remembered seeing my friend's dish cost 12 dollars, yet there was nothing for 12 dollars on the whole menu. My dish I realized after looking at the menu was also charged a couple of dollars more. Now if the prices have changed and the menus we were given to order from are not correct, that's terrible business practice. I hate being overcharged and this seemed deliberate as it was a hand-written bill and occurred with both entrees. Anyway, I said "Let's just forget it. I don't ever want to go back to that place again" ....and I won't!!!

This place really is the tsar bomba of all Indian restaurants in town. It really is authentic indian RESTAURANT food. Just the way you go to a good old time pub here and order finger food; you can go to this place and expect them to cook food that woul be served to you in a popular restaurant in India.As an aside this is run by a south Indian person - so the things to order are the coconut gravy based dishes and the dosas. But I've heard he is pretty good with the north Indian/Mughal-ai dishes as well - the tikka masala, the biryani, the palak paneer etc.The south Indian food will be a revalation to you. coconutty gravies that you might like or not like - I like some of them not some of them.I'm an Indian, I've been a foodie all my life - this is spicy good Indian restaurant food. I'm not a snob - if you like your whitish creamy Indian gravies then by all means ENJOY - but you owe it to yourself to try this food.Ps - the dosas are awesome.EDIT: Cannot really recommend this place any more. On a recent visit, the food was uneatable - The chicken was not really fresh, so much so that I left the large piece of chicken after taking a few bites. Maybe it was a strange day, maybe it was a mistake, a lunar eclipse, the solar equinox.... but.... really.... I wont be going here again. I loved you Mallu cafe... then you kicked me where it really, really hurt... :(

They have really good food and I enjoy getting takeout here on a regular basis. They did get my order wrong once, but I took it back in and they gave me the right order and let me keep the stuff that was wrong that they gave me.

The customer service is really bad,the man was making customers angry really bad I don't recommend to my friends and relatives

The food is actually pretty good, but the service is not. They are very unorganized. I had to wait over an hour after they told me the food would be ready to get my order. Also, they run out of food, and don't always tell you until your get there. The people that work there are nice, but they really need help with getting organized.