Cedars Restaurant

Great menu. Many fantastic selections from the Mediterranean.
Spanakopita and spicy grilled cheese for an appetizer. The cheese was amazing with a great cilantro sauce.
Entrees included Dal, Chicken & Spinach, Coconut Curry & Lamb Shishkabob. Food was delicious.
Our granddaughter loved her mango yogurt smoothie.

My favorite Indian restaurant in the city, no doubt. I eat here every other week or so and it’s always awesome. The staff is very friendly as well. I couldn’t recommend Cedars more highly.
Try the Shahi Kourma. It’s out of control good.

Very very good Indian food with large portions! As many people have pointed out, the naan bread spills over the not-​even-​that-​small of a plate that it’s served in and even after ripping off piece after piece, it hardly seems any smaller than when it came out. However, most people forget to mention that the actual entrees are also gigantic.
I got the tandoori chicken and it came with such a huge pile of rice, I felt like I couldn’t move anything without some falling off onto the table. Now I’m a fan of large portions of food like anyone else, but I was really missing out on something to pair the rice with. Don’t get me wrong, the tandoori chicken was spiced really well and wasn’t too dry (it was just a little hard to cut without spilling even more rice). But the vegetables it came with were a little pathetic. It was like four carrots and like 10 slices of potatoes. Now it probably wouldn’t have been as much of an issue with a curry dish where you can mix it in the rice, but for the tandoori chicken, there was just too much plain rice hanging out.
The price is a little much, but you are getting a lot of food — you can definitely take home a hefty amount of naan bread and rice. Also, the space in the restaurant (much like the space on your plate) just doesn’t seem enough. The tables are really small (one order of naan pretty much takes half the space) and they are so close together that you can hear the next table chewing — might as well get an order of naan for you and the table next to you…

Winner winner BUTTER CHICKEN dinner! I was introduced to this dish by a friend who missed it from college days and said there’s not anything comparable in Oregon. When I visited Seattle again I knew I’d take a large to-​go order back home. I placed an order for 10 and they were so kind to pack the ingredients separately, provide heating directions, and even threw in some extra sides to complement the meal. I was told the darker the sauce gets the better it tastes and this is true. We should have let it heat longer because the reheated leftover sauce the next day tasted better. So if you plan to heat the ingredients yourself take your time!
This restaurant is easy to find and there’s a parking lot across from it so if you’re in the Seattle University District you must stop by and try the butter chicken or if you’re crazy like me you’ll get it to-​go and drive 3 hours to share it with others!

This is my favorite Indian food on Seattle of all I’ve tried so far. They also have a good selection of Mediterranean cuisine as well. The main reason I love this place is because of the bigger-​than-​your-​face-​naan :) jk but not really. The naan is not only generously portioned but fluffy, fresh, crispy where it should be, and nicely flavored (get the garlic naan!). My hubby said you could get the naan amd eat that with the provided sauces (tamarind and cilantro sauces) and call it a meal :)
Let’s talk about the butter masala. It’s on point. Buttery, rich, flavorful, delicious. Get it!
The tandoori chicken is also on point. It has a nice grilled flavor and is tender. I really am against dry tandoori so this was great.
Samosas are delicious and crispy pockets of yummy potato goodness.
But the naan, go for the naan:)

Awesome, authentic Indian food! It’s probably one of the best in the U District area. Definitely go for a garlic naan to share with the table, they’re huge! I had the butter masala and it was excellent, just enough and didn’t leave me feeling groggy after the meal. Plus, the flavors were on point. I’ll be back in the near future!

*This review was conducted on a delivery order via Über Eats**
Condition upon delivery/​Packaging to go: ⁵⁄₅ — nice job! We ordered 2 entrees and everything was in perfect condition (and hot) as if we had just received it in the restaurant.
Food: 3.5÷5:
Tandoori Chicken 3÷5− while the chicken itself was tender and cooked well, there was a lack of flavor that I wasn’t expecting. We opted to get extra fresh veggies instead of rice, they were well cooked and had a good flavor — be aware their veggie mix includes a lot of potatoes.
Keema Kebab — ⁵⁄₅ — these were so good! I wish we had more of this and less of the chicken. Similar to kofta, but with a slightly different mixture of spices. The spice mixture they use is great, really flavorful without being overpowering. The sauce served with it was great — a kind of creamy, spicy aioli, not really yogurt sauce as it didn’t have the tartness.

Every dish we ordered was very tasty. The 9 was incredible. Their wine prices are decent. Service was good. Definitely would go back again. We ordered all Indians so I would like to try the Mediterranean next time

Abysmal service. After 15 minutes of waiting, our waitress finally walked over and said «you want to order?». We did. We never saw her again. Our food was not good. We ordered lamb kabobs and tandoori chicken. Naan was huge and tasty (the only reason for any stars) but our chicken and lamb were salty and DRY. No other flavor at all. And the veggies that came with our dishes were just green pepper and potatoes.
We had to flag somebody down to get our check and then had to get up to pay at the counter because nobody came to get our card.
Toilets in the ladies room were backed up.
Just a terrible experience in general.

Ordered butter chicken curry, mango curry with lamb, and garlic naan. Meat was tender and the mango curry was very good! Naan portions were very large.
We actually ordered for pickup. When we called, we wanted to know if the $ 5 off $ 30 Unilocal offer applied to pickup orders. The person over the line said yes, but when we arrived to pick up the food the person at the counter said the deal only applies for dine-​in. Not a big deal for us, however they were very kind and offered to take 10% off our meal, which was essentially still $ 5 off our order. It’s nice to see they care about customer service, and because of this and their great food we’ll be returning again!

Apart from the naan, nothing else gets it 2 stars. The curries were way too creamy, creamy doesn’t mean tasty. Had rough throat when I left. Biryani was just a dump of spices.
Ambience is a disaster, it’s a house of flies. If you haven’t seen flies in the US, visit this place.

Oh yum! Cedars Restaurant is a great, homey place to satisfy any Indian and even Mediterranean cravings you might have. The menu is huge with everything from dolmades to tandoori to cheesecake.
We decided to stick with pretty traditional dishes and went with the cucumber yogurt, garlic naan and butter chicken. We got our food SUPER quick. First the naan — which is HUGE — then the butter chicken and the yogurt. Everything was so good and so savory. And between the two of us, the bill came out to be $ 12 each.
I’m very fond of Cedars, and absolutely would come back again.

I didn’t think I was a fan of Indian food before (simply because I’ve never had it before), but after coming here, I’m in love with butter chicken + naan.
BEST FOOD: Butter Chicken, Garlic Naan
These are huge portions, so it’s best to get two main dishes and a naan between two people. If you come in a party of 4, a naan between 4 is still decent portioning since the main dishes come with rice as well. The butter chicken is sweet and (like the name suggests) creamy that is great with rice or naan. It’d be difficult to eat the butter chicken on its own because of how rich it is.
SERVICE: Great
The owner is super nice and promptly comes around to check on the customers. Every time I’ve gone, I’ve seen the owner either seat people or taking orders; he is very much as involved as his employees are.
SEATING: Spacious, Plenty
This place has a very home-​y vibe to it. It is great for large parties (10+), small parties, or even lone diners! Although if you go at dinner time on weekends there might be a wait, in general, the wait is super short (less than 15 min, at worst) and food comes out pretty fast anyways.
CONS: Too much food (which really isn’t a con if you think about it)
I always have to get my leftovers togo cuz there’s simply too much food to be finished in one sitting. Would recommend getting takeout and just eating it at home at your own pace!

Diminishing returns. After 30 years these last two visits were the worst. Poor help is coupled with disorganization. Bringing entrees first. Appetizers without the bread. The worst crime is the lowered quality of the meat. Lamb beef and chicken. This last time was with a group that had good memories from college that were dashed.
The staff is nice but inefficient.
How a tandoori dish can be ready in 6 minutes makes me suspicious and the meat was very dry.
Last time for this place that did good meals for years.

A newbie to this place, recommended by my daughter that goes to UW. Loved everything we had here: Garlic Naan, chicken curry, lamb biryani, lamb shish kabob and butter chicken in a smooth, rich tomato cream sauce.
Great flavors and huge portion of food compared to other Indian restaurants we have been to. We are satisfied with our experience here. We will definitely come back.

I wanted to love this place, and I will say the entrees I saw on other people’s tables looked amazing. The service here was the worst I’ve encountered in a decade of living in Seattle. We never did get our food. Immediately when we sat down our waiter asked if we were ready to order, however we hadn’t had a chance to even open our menus yet — I was literally still pushing my chair in. 20 minutes later he came back to take our order but didn’t write it down. We got our appetizer, but then nothing else arrived. We sat for 1 hour and 5 minutes trying to get someone’s attention. Finally our waiter emerged with our bill and a smile and I said «you’ve got to be kidding». The food we never received was on the bill. He was unaware that our food hadn’t arrived, but surely he should have been aware that we sat there trying to get someone’s attention for over an hour and he didn’t check in on our table one time during that hour. He apologized and went to get our food, but I said just redo the check for only the appetizer and we went somewhere else for dinner. By that time we were famished.

The place looks unsanitary but the biggest and best nan is served here. Lots of good curry options but not the best tandoori chicken.

Great Indian food. We had butter chicken and Dahl and Chicken Tikka Masala… all great. Service was very friendly, but a little inconsistent which keeps this from 5 stars.

We came for an early dinner around 4pm midweek and will be back! Excellent and friendly service paired with great tastes, hot food and good value. Loved it!

I really like this place and have since, sheesh, the mid 90s. I’ll bet if you rearrange the letters for «Cedars on Brooklyn,» it would spell «If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It.» Actually, no, it doesn’t, but an anagram generator does say it could spell «Broke randy colons» or «crooked nylon bras». Silly anagrams.
Anyway…
Their menu – a few Middle Eastern items and a healthy selection of popular Indian dishes – seems to have changed very little over the years, nor has their overall formula and approach: good, reliable, tasty food at a reasonable price in a no-​frills, no-​nonsense environment.
There are plenty of options here; lots for vegetarians, and of course plenty for chicken-​atarians, lamb-​atarians, and so on. They definitely will oblige if you want your food to be spicy. Appetizer plates easily serve 4 adults, and they make nice, big, fluffy pieces of naan.
The dining experience is kinda hectic and kinda laid back at the same time, which suits the U-​District well. The restaurant can be loud and boisterous. Typically the entire waitstaff seems to share responsibility for every table, which means service will ebb and flow, but everyone who works here is friendly and quick with any request. They seem more than ready for large groups, and they may still cater… many moons ago, some friends got married and had Cedars cater the wedding, and it was great!

It was a gathering so I went there with a bunch of people. Price was extremely cheap because for each entrée you order comes with a HUGE plate of rice. I’d say that it’s a waste as most people, including guys, can’t finish such huge servings. I ordered curry, and it was very ordinary, nothing worth mentioning. This isn’t a place that I’d consider coming again unless I need a restaurant with lots of seats.

Having a coupon usually isn’t the best reason to try out a restaurant, especially if the coupon came in a mailer…
Well, we’d seen this second-​floor restaurant pretty often and wanted to check it out anyway, so we used the «buy a meal and two drinks, get the second meal free» coupon. Our bill was still $ 27 before tipping. A little more than I’d hoped.
We ordered a New Belgium Trippel, masala chai, and paneer pakora to start. I hadn’t had paneer pakora before this meal, and I probably won’t after. It was odd — just garam batter-​fried paneer squares. I love paneer, and veggie pakora, but I didn’t really care for the paneer pakora, nor the chutneys here. I didn’t like the chai either, as it left an odd aftertaste. I wasn’t heartbroken when they didn’t refill it for me.
By the time we got our food, we’d been approached by no fewer than four servers. This is definitely a pet peeve of mine, and is often encountered in cheaper places with poor organization (go figure). Our table wasn’t ready when they sat us, so silverware and the other bits had to be brought one at a time, one person at a time (in addition to the orders we gave). The worst part was that I got a really spicy dish and we were the ONLY table on the floor without a pitcher of water. And it took forever to get someone’s attention because they all have their heads down the entire time — really care about the customers, don’t they? Oh and our order — the guy who took our order tried repeating it back to us and forgot… wait for it… everything! So no surprise when we had to reorder a few things.
They were kind enough to give my dinner mate a second helping of basmati free of charge. Her mango curry with paneer was really good — I wish I’d gotten it rather than my rogan josh (spice level 4). It was ok, but nothing special, at all. I do have to say that the curry was really good, so star for that.
I don’t really recommend this restaurant. They’re incredibly overpriced for the quality of food. However, they do have a wide selection of naan and beer. Not worth it for us, however.

Tried out Cedars for a company dinner and got to say the food overall is prettty good. Very solid Buttered Chicken and the Garlic Naan is a must. Super big piece of Naan for $ 2.50! The spice level is kind of underwhelming, because I order mine very spicy and still didn’t think it was that spicy.
Not very spacious and seating could be an issue for bigger parties. Overall it is the best Indian food that I have tried and know of so I would say why not come try it out!

Best Indian restaurant in U-​District! Cedars is the place to go to when you are craving naan and curries. The butter chicken is my all time favorite — buttery, spiced goodness! Order the garlic naan, their naan are HUGE! I like to dip the naan in the green and brown sauce they serve with it. Tiki masala is another great dish, but I always order the butter chicken everytime I go here. The service here is slow, you really need to get their attention. They have complimentary parking in the Safeway parking lot across the street so that’s really nice.

I’d give them a zero if I could. The owner was a huge a-​hole to us. I will never give this place my business.

This place is really good. The NAN is A+
The only negatives are the décor is weird (random art with no theme) and I have seen bugs but you know… it’s an old building
overall this place puts a lot of detail into their food

I am stunned with myself for giving them a 5 star review 4 years ago. Perhaps I hadn’t yet eaten enough food throughout Seattle for perspective. Even now I question my rating. This is why we have professional food critics and why every single Unilocal review should be taken with a grain of salt.
Unfortunately the falafel on the Combination Plate was really, really dry. It was so dry that it seemed it had been made at least a day before. The hummus and baba ghannoj was good. The pita bread was acceptable.
I ordered a tabbouli salad that I requested to be served with my meal. They still brought it out early as an appetizer. Not ok.

My friends and I (a party of 5) came here on a Friday night. It was our fault this never occurred to any of us prior to coming here, but we did not make a reservation for dinner. When we got here at 6:30pm, it was PACKED!!! It was very confusing where we should put our name down for a table but we eventually weaved our way through traffic and put our name down. We waited for almost 25 minutes until we finally got our table. It was very weird though because even though we put our name down (like others), they didn’t actually go off the list to seat each party. Instead, they randomly would call out «Anyone a party of _​_​_​people?» and seated groups accordingly. When the hostess called out «Anyone a party of 5?» luckily one of our friends heard her and spoke up so we could get seated. If it weren’t for her, I’m not sure when our party would’ve actually been seated since they didn’t actually call out anyone’s names off the list. When we got seated, despite how crowded the restaurant was, our waiter came to our table within a couple of minutes to ask us if we were ready to order. Even though we weren’t, he came within another 2 – 3 minutes after to ask us again.
After we placed our order, I believe it took us only 5 minutes to receive our drinks, Garlic Naan and appetizers we ordered. The naan — delicious! I wish there were more of a garlic flavor but that was my personal opinion. It took another 10 minutes to receive our entrees, which was a lot quicker than we thought given our packed the restaurant was this evening. I ordered the Mango Lassi drink (BOMB — I HIGHLY recommend!!!) and the Butter Chicken. SO DELICIOUS! The portion sizes were generous so I was able to split my meal into two. We also got our check in a very timely manner so that was greatly appreciative as well. They gave us one check (didn’t ask if we wanted to split it up) so since we wanted to split up the check, we had to go to the front and pay accordingly.
Cedars is delicious but if you come here during the weekend/​dinnertime, I highly recommend making a reservation. And also if you come in and there are a ton of people also waiting for a table, I would recommend standing near the counter and ask occasionally about a table for your group since they don’t actually call off names on their clipboard.

Pretty disappointed in Cedars this time around. Slow service, dirty sauce jars and spoons on the table and very unfriendly staff. Good was good though. The window sills are filthy with dirt and old food. Now I know why I get take out!

Cedars is my least favorite Indian restaurant in Seattle. It feels so mainstream, and it seems to me that they scaled without regard to quality control, since every time I have eaten Cedars food it has been subpar and overpriced. I’ve had under-​cooked chicken and overcooked rice here, so now I avoid Cedars — curry and rice is the staple for any Indian restaurant, and Cedars failed at it!

One of my favorite places to order takeout! This place is a staple for any student or visitor to the area, very well known for their food. At times it can be a hit or a miss, depending on when and what you order, hence the loss of one star. But I come here as much as I can, and did when I lived here, and was always satisfied.
The amount of basmati rice they give you is insane, definitely way more than one person could possibly consume in one sitting. Sometimes a four star spicy rating doesn’t hit my spice meter, and sometimes it’s right on point. I prefer eating my curry with the rice but if you don’t, their naan is HUGE, definitely able to share with more than two or three people.
I can always stretch a meal from Cedar’s for a few days. Their samosas are wonderful too. It might seem to be on the pricey side but if you can’t finish it in one sitting you can have leftovers for at least one day!

All you need to know is: paneer tikka masala and garlic naan. Order to-​go and you get like 2x the curry. Everything refrigerates well for lunch the next day too.
Not much needs to be said for this U District staple.
Protip: check the back side of your Safeway receipt for coupons.

Food is tasty as always… Service sucks though… It’s usually hit or miss in that department. I always get the vegetable coconut curry since I’m a vegetarian, and they’re always great at loading it up with a variety of veggies. The garlic naan is amazing AND HUGE, one is definitely more than enough for 2 people. Parking is sorta weird since you think it’s right next to the restaurant but they actually have reserved spots across the street in the Safeway parking lot.
Good thing I wasn’t in a hurry, during my last visit, or else I probably would have flipped shit. There was practically anyone there during lunch times and it was so slow to get someone to help you. Next time, I’ll probably do take out to avoid the stress.

This place has been around awhile and it’s starting to show. The food is still great but the dining room is a bit on the tired side. This day we had several dishes and they were all great. There is a sampler plate that is big enough for a scad of friends and maybe even an entrée, if you’re alright with fried food. Out of all the dishes on the table, I think the Chicken Tikka Masa was the best.
Sadly, the day we went to Cedar’s was a record breaking hot day and this place doesn’t have AC. Not that this is going to be a common problem in the Seattle area, but if it’s hot out, don’t come here unless you want an authentic Indian climate.

Thank goodness my first Indian restaurant was fantastic. First I liked the service. I don’t mind the waitress’s scary face because she always brought us water and chai even if the cups were half full. And the chai. I love their chai and loved that they kept filling it up! Now I drank too much but it was so good I thought to drink it all because the waitress kept filling it up. And then after each time the cup gets halfway she keeps filling so I could never finish it. This was a never ending circle of good chai and it was heaven to me.
I don’t know much about Indian food but I had butter chicken and it was so smooth and creamy and you could choose the hotness so I have no complaints. Because of the rice that comes with the dish and the chai, I got so full and my stomach now hurts. But it’s good ache. I also got $ 5 discount because I checked in. Thank you Unilocal.And Cedars.