Bay Leaf
Kuldip Singh has run Indian restaurants from Washington to Kansas. He cooks Punjabi food with his son now, in Round Rock. Matthew Odam puts them among the best Indian kitchens in the Austin area. One clear wall is all that stands between the small dining room and two tandoor ovens.
Why go
The room opened at 3200 Greenlawn Boulevard on 22 March 2022, in a suite behind a parking lot in Round Rock.4 Matthew Odam, the Austin American-Statesman's restaurant critic, made the layout the argument for the place. The wall can't contain the bounty of beautiful aromas from filling the entire space.
The meat off the two tandoors is juicy and tender.
1 The spice work is toasted and ground fresh, which is what he says you taste first.1 Singh's own account is that he came to America in the early 1980s with his tandoor and his tavah and opened a restaurant called The Passage to India, and that Bay Leaf carries those recipes forward.5 I have found nothing that corroborates it, and no judgment on the cooking from any writer except Odam.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the hariyali chicken. Odam put it among the ten best things he ate in Austin in May 2025.
The hariyali chicken might not be full of curb appeal, but the grilled chicken dish, enlivened by a riot of radiant green herbs, is not short on flavor.
3 - Then the goat rogan josh, which Odam describes as
packed with a rack of warming spices.
1 - And the coconut shrimp curry, where the sweetness is
tempered by the bitter crunch of methi.
1 - Avoid: going for a quick plate and skipping the tandoor. The oven work is the reason the critic keeps coming back and it is made to order.
What locals & experts say
- Matthew Odam has Bay Leaf on the Statesman's 2025 guide to the city's best restaurants, filed under Indian, and he calls it one of the Austin area's best.1
- He put it first when he wrote about the corridor in July 2025:
Round Rock is home to some of the best Indian restaurants in Central Texas,
and the two he names are Bay Leaf and Rock N' Grill.2 - Brooke Sjoberg reported the opening for Community Impact, and the menu she described covers vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free.4
Good to know
- The address is Greenlawn Boulevard in Round Rock, in a suite off a parking lot, and there is no walking to it from central Austin.4
- Closed Mondays, with lunch and dinner service the rest of the week.5
- The dining room is small. A large group should call ahead.1
Verdict
should-visit — Two tandoors in a dining room this small will get you out to Round Rock, and Odam says the meat off them is juicy and tender with the spice ground fresh. He went back to the same three dishes twice in one year. Order the hariyali chicken first.