Critic's Review
I virtually never get a craving for Indian food; I admit that it's not a favorite of mine. But the only place in South Florida that you get a decent portion these days is at the buffets, so I thought I'd try this. Lunch is $10.95, which is about as cheap as you can expect for an all you can eat buffet these days.
The restaurant is part of a hotel, which is usually not a good thing. There were only a couple of cars outside at 1:15pm, which is also a bad sign.
I walked into an empty dining room.
There's a bar and a big room up front; the buffet is in a sunken area in the back of the restaurant. The table settings are minimal; no salt or pepper or anything to provide even minimal ambiance.
There's really no server, just a guy who is a runner and busser and everything else. I sat there for a second wondering of someone would take my drink order, but I decided to just get up and fill a plate from the buffer. There was no indication that there was an ala-carte option, not that I was interested in seeing a menu. There were about 10 people in the lower dining room; one group of 6 and a spattering of others.
As I checked each item on the buffet, I realized that this was not going to be a positive experience. No bread, no lamb and the vegetarian dishes looked awful. Much of the food already looked old, and with this crowd I didn't expect them to be refilling anything with fresh food. The big kicker was no Naan; no bread on an Indian buffer. I was borderline angry. They did have a salad bar, I grabbed a salad, and the only 2 meat dishes on the buffet.
As I went back to the table, I saw that they put bread on the table. Ok, now I felt better. The bread is the best part of an Indian buffet, and this was warm and freshly oiled.
There was also a big pitcher of ice water on the table. A guy came over and asked if I wanted a drink, but the water seemed like it would be good enough, so I declined.
Way to cost yourself $3 guys. The reason restaurants don't offer water anymore is that they want you to spend $3 on colored water.
The salad was fine; some sort of yogurt dressing that wasn't too strong. The Chicken Kadhai and Goat Curry were so similar that I could barely tell them apart. Both with flat tasting indian spices; not too earthy and not too spicy; very buffet-like.
Music is the creepy Indian lounge music that we all love; you can hear some of it on their web site as well.
A runner brought out a sizzling platter with Tandoori Chicken; very visual but the onions were crispy black before I had a chance to remove them from the dish.
The chicken was fine; Tandoor chicken doesn't excite me. I was half done with this plate and I wanted something else, so I loaded up another plate with the "other" stuff in the buffet. Just so I could show what they were serving.
The lentil dish was so loose that I struggled to get a spoonful of lentils. Another loose dish of cottage cheese with peas that I couldn't find on the regular menu served no purpose. Fried potatoes that may have been good when fresh were useless without a salt shaker available. Cheesy mixed vegetable were cold and inedible after 2 hours on the buffet.
The second plate was largely inedible. I finished up the first plate and the bread (which was superb, btw), and headed for the door. I didn't know if I was supposed to pay on the way out, but I wasn't waiting around in this dreary dining room.
Conclusion
This buffet is one of the worst Indian buffets I've been to, with the possible exception of Indian Chillies, which was ridiculously bad. If the buffet was supposed to be a sampling to draw you into the restaurant for a more expensive dinner, they failed miserably. The selection of dishes was bad, and the stuff they had was cheap and uninspiring. Add to that the feeling that you're eating in someone's basement, and you have all of the elements of a strong non-recommendation.
