| rev:text
| - Let me start by saying that Madras Palace used to be rather good, especially their buffets. Back in the 2007/2008 time-frame, I lived up in the GTA and used to go there for lunch occasionally, and usually the food was well above average.
Last year, one of those group buy sites had a deal, and I picked up a couple of vouchers for this place. That was my first mistake.
First of all, it was difficult to get them on the phone to ask if there was a buffet on a Saturday or Sunday night - they simply don't seem to answer the phone at all during the day. I had better luck calling them in the evening.
So a month ago, I called on Sunday morning, assuming that I'd get the recording telling me that voice mail hasn't yet been set up by the restaurant (nice going, by the way). To my shock, I got a live human being who said yes, they did have buffet lunch.
So I made a reservation and my friends and I drove there from Mississauga and downtown. Only to get there and see the buffet completely empty. We were the only customers! The server hemmed and hawed and said "buffet will be ready in 20 minutes" - so we decided to wait. 5 minutes later, the same server came back to say, "sorry, we cannot do a buffet today, why don't you order a la carte?"
Hmm, methinks - there is another branch. So I pulled out my cell phone, called, and asked if there was a buffet there (this is the Scarborough branch I was calling). And got a mumbled answer that I understood as "yes". So we hightailed it out of the Richmond Hill location and over to Scarborough. Much smaller restaurant. At least the people seemed to be enjoying their lunches. Except - you guessed it - the buffet was empty! So I said, "What's up? I just called" and they tell me "Oh, we *just* sent our cooks to the other branch to make the buffet there". Great. We gave up and went elsewhere for lunch - it was almost 2 by this time and we were not in the mood to play musical restaurants any more.
A week later, we tried again. This time, we made dinner reservations. Again, there was only one car in the parking lot. But the sign said "Open". So we went in. The buffet was blah-looking, but we were hungry and decided to go for it anyway. Umm - don't bother. There was plain rice and an egg fried rice. The plain rice was overcooked, the egg fried rice had a distinct taste of spoiled veggies (maybe it'd been sitting too long?) The fish curry was WAY too sour and the mutton curry was terribly oversalted. The food in the vegetarian section all looked as if it had sat there all day. The only saving grace was the masala dosa, which they made fresh and brought to the table - even that was ultra greasy, but at least it was fresh.
Silly me. I thought maybe it was because I'd come in just bad luck and they may normally have better food. So I called another family and invited them to help me use up my last coupon. Again, we could only make it for dinner.
Should I even bother writing the details? Just see the paragraph above - it was a repeat of the previous experience.
If you have a voucher for this place, throw it away or use it at the Scarborough location - like I said, the food there *appeared* to be more authentic and fresh. If you don't have a voucher, save your money and head someplace else - there are dozens of excellent restaurants in Richmond Hill, and you're better off heading to Saravanaa Bhavan or Udupi Palace for authentic South Indian food.
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