Critic's Review
I heard this place opened and they had a buffet. So off I went to check it out.
When I opened the door, I almost turned around and left. It's a tiny place with makeshift seating. There was no greeter, so I wandered in the the buffet looked fairly extensive, so I decided to take a seat and stay for lunch.
I hit a lot of traffic; going East/West around here has become impossible, so I got here later than I usually like to get to a buffet. After 2p some places won't restock, and you just get a lot of old food.
I ordered an iced tea with lemon and grabbed a plate and loaded it up with stuff.
Could they spare the lemon; I mean could you slice a lemon any thinner. Dear restaurant owner:
Lemon is NOT a garnish for iced tea.
Now those of you who read this site know that I'm not big on Indian Food; usually on a buffet I can find enough stuff to get my money's worth.
On this plate I had Chill Chicken (the thing that looks like a wing), tomato rice, Chicken Tikka, Poriyal (fried vegetables), Chicken Vindaloo, Lamb curry and some sort of vegetable tempura. The lamb was almost finished so I only could get some scrapings. The only thing good was the "chill" chicken (I think maybe it's chili chicken); The vindaloo was bland and the chicken tikka was dried out and overdone. The bread was excellent, though.
Aside from the Vindaloo being bland, the chicken was too dry and hard, like they cooked the chicken and just threw it in the sauce.
They have a TV set to the Hindu music channel. Shazam refused to even listen to it.
While I was eating my first plate of slop they put out more lamb curry, so I got a small plate of that. I grabbed some potato korma (potato in yogurt sauce).
Unfortunately, the lamb wasn't done. It was too hard; this is a braised dish. They probably ran out and had to cook some quickly, but it doesn't work when the meat isn't falling apart.
I cut into the potato and it was brown; I didn't need the potatoes anyway.
The "Salad" was just a bunch of weird vegetables so that wasn't going to be an option for me.
One more pass. Good thing I had the bread.
Tandoori chicken, Chana masala and a I tried to find some tender lamb. Unfortunately It was a piece of fat.
The chana masala is supposed to be spicy, but it just tasted like Chickpeas in a brown sauce. The Tandoori chicken was ok, but was very bland. Just the usual musty Indian spices.
There's no actual server here; just a girl sitting in the back by the register. I looked back at her and gave the "check" sign.
$10.99 and $2 for the tea and micro-sliver of lemon. No Refill. $1 tip seemed generous.
Conclusion
The word I'd use here is underwhelming. Some Indian buffets don't have enough meat for the money, but the offerings were fine here. They just weren't that good. Usually there's 1 or 2 things in a buffet that I can get into, but everything here was just in a musty sauce. It's not a very inviting restaurant either. I wonder how they can support a buffet with so few seats.