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| - Short take: It scratched our itch for Indian food; would we go back if we lived here? Probably not; it was such a slog to make our way out to Richmond Hills, so unless we lived there, we'd probably try to find a closer restaurant. Maybe dinner off the menu is better....we're leaving Cleveland soon, so I won't have an opportunity to try it.
Standouts: Chicken tikka and chicken tikka masala. Also very good were uttapams and dal fry.
Baseline: We've eaten Northern and Southern Indian food made by South Asian expats and Pakistanis in South East Asia, but never in India. We lived in the Middle East where Pakistanis and South Asians make up the large class of business managers and whose food and Lebanese food are ubiquitous. We now live in Franklin, TN and still can't believe that we eat such fabulous Indian food. At least twice a week we eat at the astoundingly excellent Swagruha where Siva and VJ knock it out of the park every day with their tasty offerings and meticulous and consistent execution, whether that's the lunch buffet or the dinner menu. We learned that the family that runs Taj India Palace is from Bangladesh, so that probably accounts for some differences in style and intensity, but I can't say I've ever intentionally had Bangladeshi food--now, my curiosity is piqued; I can't wait to try some and now I've distracted myself.
We threaded our way out to Taj India Palace after reading glowing reports of their buffet. We arrived a little late--2:30pm on Mother's Day, when the buffet closes at 3pm, so we didn't go at peak buffet time. The shopping center it's in looks abandoned and forlorn, but we're used to finding great food in just such places: in the cheap seats. For us, "ethnic" food in fringe neighborhoods is almost a guarantee of good, if not great, food to come. "Ethnic" food in high rent districts? Meh, not so much.
We were expecting a crazy Mother's Day crowd. There wasn't one. We expected more patrons than we saw; there weren't many. We did see South Asians, so we were pleased with that, but not so many; maybe 5-6 tables? The buffet looked like it had seen some action, so I guessed that the volume might have been a little higher earlier.
The buffet featured Indian thalis--stainless steel trays with compartments and some Northern Indian and some Southern Indian standards, chicken tikka, goat curry, chicken tikka masala, dal fry (yellow lentils with garlic and cumin), chana masala (garbanzo beans with red gravy), bindhi (okra), fish curry, idlis, gulab jamun (little donut balls of epic-ness said my 12 year old), ginger chicken and a few more vegetarian selections that I can't recall. We weren't offered dosas and were really looking forward to that. I didn't see anyone else getting dosas either.
The uttapam (rice flour bread) on the buffet were tiny little rounds like pancakes, with scallions and peas--tasty with a pleasing slight chewiness. The nan was nicely puffy, but tasted like they were raised too quickly. They tasted vaguely of raw flour and were overly yeasty, but they did have a nice texture--puffy and chewy; good for mopping up dal fry.
The chicken tikka was excellent and a stand out; as was the chicken tikka masala. The chicken tikka was tender and juicy with a decent amount of heat for a buffet selection. My 6 year old ate maybe 7 pieces of chicken after I peeled the spicy layers off.
We had some masala chai; I liked that it was delivered in a small stainless steel tea pitcher, so I could have more than one cup of it, but it was disappointingly bland, even after I sweetened it with table sugar. I love my masala chai strong and bracing, with sweetened condensed milk. I learned to drink it that way at a Pakastani-run Indian restaurant in Vientiane, Laos, called Nazim's where they made it from scratch by muddling a cardamom pod and a whole clove and then steeping that in Indian black tea poured on top of about an inch of sweetened condensed milk. Great food, but an absolute dive. The best black pepper chicken pepper fry I've ever had, but now, I'm just waxing nostalgic.
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