OPTIONS GALORE
Buffets once occupied a valued spot in my dining-out rotation. One week, I’d hit Golden Corral or Furr’s; the next, a Chinese place. I appreciated the dizzying array of food, the reasonable prices and the free seconds. Additionally, the vast dining rooms offered some good opportunities for peoplewatching.
Gradually, though, buffets lost their luster for me. Too much mediocre, underheated food — too many sodden vegetables and gristly hunks of meat. A case of quantity over quality.
And so, when I visited the Indian restaurant Taaj Palace on a recent cold and damp Saturday night, I ignored the fiery-colored food at the buffet tables and asked for a menu. I was in the midst of ordering a few dishes when the server gently reminded me that all the things I wanted were also available at the buffet, and for only a few dollars more than the price of a single entree. I finally relented and, like every other diner there, stepped up to the buffet.
I was surprised to find that, not only was the food serviceable; much of it was quite good.
First, a little history. Taaj Palace opened in a Northeast Heights strip mall in 2008. It was originally called Taj Palace, but at some point, an extra “A” was added to the name. Along with nearby India Palace, it’s one of the longest-standing Indian restaurants in the area.
Taaj Palace is open six days a week for lunch and dinner. The dinner buffet is $19.99 on the weekend, $18.99 Tuesday through Thursday. The lunch buffet is a few dollars cheaper. Entering the place, you’re greeted with a surprise: racks of colorful clothing apparently for sale. Past the entry hall is a private dining room where I saw an Indian family eating at a large, round table. Everyone else was in the small dining room adjacent to the buffet tables.
Buffet tables line two sides of the dining room. One table is devoted to vegetarian dishes and sides like Zucchini Masala and Cabbage Mutter, a dish of shredded cabbage and peas.
Highlights from the vegetarian side include the Vegetable Samosas, puffed-up triangles of pastry stuffed with potatoes and peas. The flavor evokes a good Thanksgiving stuffing.
Taaj Palace’s version of Saag Paneer is up there with the best of the city. Blocks of the mild-flavored cheese dot a spinach mix that is creamy and herbaceous, with a mild sizzle at the end of the bite.
Only the Naan suffered somewhat from the buffet format. While it was crisp and buttery with ample garlic flavor, it was missing the fluffiness of the stuff that comes fresh from the oven.
The other buffet table offers meat, chicken and seafood items, with names both familiar and obscure.
The chicken dishes shined. There was Tandoori Chicken, of course, presented as a pile of reddened legs, thighs and breast portions in a foil-lined tray. The moist meat carried smokiness, especially in the crispy burnt edges. A few
spots down the buffet line, Spicy Halal Tandoori Chicken added a charge of red chile-based heat to the mix.
Best of all was a Chicken Tikka Masala that combined chunks of white meat and a creamy tomato sauce. The tangy, sweet sauce carried a little buzz of heat underneath it and a touch of nuttiness from the fenugreek leaves.
Notable among the other meat courses was a Goat Curry served in a tangy sauce fragrant with ginger. The meat on the bone-in chunks was falling-apart tender. Moist, fine-grained meatballs made with chicken and beef in a ginger-garlic sauce were also good.
As for the seafood options, I found the coating of the Fish Pakora so thick and crunchy that it overwhelmed the delicate, flaky fish inside. A better choice was the shrimp with vegetables in a brown sauce buzzing with Indian spices.
Augmenting the entrees are a selection of six chutneys that cover the spectrum from a cooling yogurt-based raita to a blazing red chile paste.
The small dessert selection offers some lighter options like cut-up fruit, mango custard and rice pudding. Both the custard and the pudding were surprisingly thin in consistency, with a pleasing balance between the sweetness and the spices. On the heavier side of the spectrum are excellent renditions of Gulab Jamun, milk doughnuts made with rounds of fried dough. The surfaces of the doughnuts remained crisp in a clear, faintly floral syrup of cardamom and rose water. The little blocks of cheesecake in paper wrappers offered an intriguing variation of the familiar dessert: creamier and redolent of cardamom.
Several of the drinks also suffice as dessert, like a glass of Mango
Lassi ($3.50) that burst with peachy, citrus flavor. Rooh Afza ($3.50), the Indian-style milkshake, was more subtle, with an ever-so-faint taste of strawberries.
Most of the buffet offerings are gluten-free, and some are halal.
One man worked the dining room during our meal with impressive efficiency. In between taking orders, he doted on the buffet table, wiping surfaces down and refilling the trays as needed.
Taaj Palace has restored my faith in buffets. The selection is of good quality and there is enough variety for repeat visits.