Raj Indian Restaurant serves Indian food from 9 Clyde Street in Balclutha, and it has clearly won the town over, holding a 4.7 Google rating from 432 reviews.
A good Indian restaurant lives or dies by its curries: a proper base of onion, garlic, ginger and whole spices cooked down slowly, rather than one sauce recycled across the menu. Menus typically run from mild kormas and butter chicken through to hotter madras and vindaloo, so it pays to ask how the heat is pitched and start a level below what you think you can handle. Sharing is the custom — two or three curries with rice and fresh naan will feed a table far better than a dish each — and vegetarians are usually well looked after with paneer, dhal and vegetable dishes. In country towns, the takeaway trade is often as important as the dining room.
For a curry night in South Otago, Raj Indian Restaurant on Clyde Street is a well-liked local option.