I enjoy trying new restaurants, but I normally don't write reviews about the places I've eaten. However, if a restaurant is exceptional (good or bad), I feel I owe it to other Austinites to share my opinion. Masala Wok made it onto my "exceptional" list: exceptionally bad.

On the strong recommendation of a friend, my wife and I made the trek to Masala Wok for dinner. We enjoy good Indian and Chinese food (and I don't mean "good like white people eat there", but "good like Indian and Chinese people eat there").

And while Masala Wok had a lot of people inside, and many of them were not white, my wife and I both agreed that this was some of the worst food we had ever eaten. Anywhere. Indian or not. And just so it's clear, I will never, ever return to eat there. Not even if you paid me.

In all seriousness, I've had more enjoyable meals from the little egg roll carts around the UT Austin campus. I'm not saying that the cart food was good, but it's edible and at least you get what you pay for. At Masala Wok, everything was way more expensive than cart food, and the food was so bad we couldn't finish eating it.

I don't recall the exact items we ordered, but we tried several different things that night, including Veggie Manchuria. We spent more than $20 and were served overly-salted food that otherwise had little to no flavor. Not to mention that we had to drive halfway to Waco to get there (yes, I'm exaggerating about the distance, but it's definitely on the edge of Austin city limits, almost in Pflugerville). If we had spent $4 on the whole meal, I would have felt like it was a fair purchase, but I would still say the food was bad.

About the atmosphere: picture a school cafeteria, fill it with people, and then cram all of the tables and chairs so close together that you cannot walk to a table without rubbing against everyone else along the way. It was also as noisy as a school cafeteria, if not noisier. We had to practically shout at each other to have a conversation. I think the typical bowling alley is quieter than Masala Wok.

So in summary:

• flavorless food with an unbelievably huge amount of salt
  
• prices are way too high considering the quality of the food
  
• loud and annoying atmosphere
  

There are a lot of good places to eat in Austin but this is not one of them. So Instead of driving to Masala Wok, just point your car in any other direction and go. You can easily find half a dozen other restaurants that will serve you better food in a much more pleasant environment. Another option would be to buy a few cans of dog food from the grocery store, add 3 or 4 cups of salt, and enjoy (this will produce food comparable to what they'll serve you at Masala Wok, but without driving in your car or paying their ridiculous prices).