Tucked into a shopping center on West William Cannon Drive, Tandoori Lounge aims to offer a blend of traditional and innovative Indian dishes with quality customer service.

Meet the owners

Hamza Ashraf opened Tandoori Lounge in August 2022 with his brother and business partner Kashif Pathan, who has been working in the Austin restaurant scene for over 20 years. They opened Zaviya Grill, a Pakistani and Indian cuisine restaurant, in North Austin in 2016 and decided to expand after customer feedback.

After deciding on their current space, they did about four months of renovations that included repainting the walls and getting the kitchen fully equipped.

“It took us about two years to find this place to our satisfaction,” Ashraf said. “It's not that we were just looking for a place and opened up.”


On the menu

The Tandoori Lounge menu features traditional Indian dishes like butter chicken, chicken biryani and palak paneer.

The restaurant’s chef, Thaman Adhikari, has been a chef for over 30 years. Before working at Tandoori Lounge, Adhikari cooked for restaurants in India and Malaysia. When he came to Austin, he worked at Bombay Bistro on South Lamar Boulevard until it closed. The menu’s recipes come from his years of experience mixed with changes based on customer feedback.

Tandoori Lounge recently opened its full bar with beer, wine, spirits and traditional cocktails. For after dinner, the menu offers several Indian desserts like rice kheer and rasmalai.


Ashraf said feedback drives management’s business decisions. They take time to have one-on-one conversations with customers when they dine at Tandoori Lounge.

“[The shift manager] will go to each customer and talk to them and get their feedback and forward it in our owners' group,” Ashraf said. “We have our meetings every two weeks [and] we’ll talk to the chef, we talk to the manager, and that's how we get things resolved on our end.”

What’s else?

Tandoori Lounge is open with full service seven days a week from 11:30 a.m. to 3 a.m. It also offers catering services and accepts private party reservations.


Ashraf said their main goal is to serve the local community in any way possible. During Texas winter storms, for example, Tandoori Lounge stayed open to serve the waves of customers who showed up to dine. Opening more restaurants and bringing quality customer service to more Austin neighborhoods is part of Ashraf's five-year plan.

“We don't go anywhere without our due diligence and research. So we don't want to just go and open up a restaurant and not be successful,” Ashraf said. “We want to wait and only focus on the areas that we know are going to be best and going to be best for the people.”