Mantra - Arrowtown

So weird. This is one of those fantastic restaurants you didn't see coming. On a Friday night it was a ghost town. We were the only table. Scary. The waiter spoke broken English (he was French?! but he was sure to clarify so he got things right. The food rolled out sloooowly, but there was enough eclectic decor to keep the kids patient. Food was great. Spice was right. Pricing was right on. So leave yourself extra time and give this one a chance. Skip the fancy naan and keep it basic. Delish!

Great Indian food in a great location. Great service, too. Visiting from overseas and found this to be a rival of any Indian I've had.

Staff was trying to be nice but even with a reservation it took 2 hours to get us food and the restaurant wasn't even that busy. The coconut scallops were dry and tasteless, we gave it a bite and could not eat the rest. The garlic naan is basically flat bread with no taste which is almost impressive since how do you hide the taste of garlic? The rest of the food when it finally arrived was fine but certainly not worth visiting for, I think supermarket Indian food tastes better. All in all, really not worth the visit since there is better Indian to be had and La Rumbla is nearby and incredible.

Delicious food and good cocktails. Kind of a weird vibe coming in but the food makes up for it.

A pleasant dining surprise in Arrowtown. We have had mixed experiences with our restaurants in Queenstown and Arrowtown, but Mantra is one of our best. We did a sizeable takeaway order but the dining room at the restaurant was tastefully done in a typical Indian motif. We had butter chicken (for the kids), lamb rogan josh, punjabi fish curry, dal tarka, chicken korma, gobi aloo mater, chana masala and heaps of roti and naan. All really good and different between the dishes. So often at Indian restaurants, it seems every sauce seems the same despite the different names of the dishes. Not so here they were all distinct and very tasty. The portion sizes were also pretty generous unusual as well, including huge quantities of rice. Overall a really good Indian restaurant well done!