Junnoon

YES! Love the cocktails / appetizers here and can't wait to have $6 drinks and goat cheese nan!

Familiar flavors with modern modern twists. Tapioca fritters had really interesting texture contrasts from chewy tapioca to crunchy peanut. Tandoori pepper steak excellent too... Server kept us moving a bit too briskly but worth another visit to sample the extensive menu some more...

The other good place is Darbar, but this place is a bit more modern - Darbar is more classic. Darbar's a couple streets over, if you're looking for more "classic" Indian.

But if you're looking for HIP and MODERN and DELICIOUS, this is the place to go. This place is right below the Facebook offices, so I've been here numerous times for lunch, and sampled a wide variety of the lunch offerings - "tiffins," I think they're called. It's all good - the steak, the lamb, and the halibut. Especially the halibut.

Also the Old Delhi Chicken is great. Sometimes I actually call in an order for that and pick it up on my way home from work (I walk down, get it, and bring it home). It's like the best "chicken in curry/tomato/whatever sauce that you eat with naan" type of dish I've had at any Indian restaurant. The naan is also very good.

The service is also very good - they are very, very polite, even when you walk in with sandals and a t-shirt. That's not to say that the clientele are scraggly though - it's just that one day when we were deciding on where to go for lunch and decided on Junnoon (we were right outside our front door trying to decide, and we just decided to walk over since they were right there), I was surprised at how politely they treated a bunch of sloppy-looking programmers. But that made a good impression.

I recently had the lamb biryani for lunch and it is very tasty. Its one of the most authentic biryani's i have tried in the SF Bay area. For the Peninsula, Junnoon is, overall, one of the better Indian restaurants you can try. The staff is courteous and attentive and the decor is modern and hip.

I recommend this place as a must-try for lunch in downtown Palo Alto.

A bunch of us went over to Junnoon for one of our coworker's birthdays several weeks ago, and unfortunately had very little time to actually eat and celebrate. They totally took care of us, though -- we had a quality meal in about 45 minutes, and the service was way better than other restaurants on University Ave. Definitely look forward to going back there for another delicious Indian meal.